FeedDemon 2.0 is now officially released. I’ve been using the beta for a few months, and I can enthusiastically recommend it as my favorite RSS reader, bar none. It’s well worth the $29.95 price tag. The two biggest pluses for me are:
- It synchronizes with NewsGator Online (which also just got a major overhaul). That means I can add, remove, update, or read my favorite RSS feeds on any computer, using a Web browser or FeedDemon or the NewsGator Inbox add-in for Outlook, and know that everything will be in perfect sync. The synchronization feature isn’t free, but at $19.95 a year I consider the NewsGator Online Premium Package a bargain. (If you don’t need to sync feeds on multiple machines, FeedDemon works fine all by itself.)
- I can back up and restore my cache of feeds, including posts I’ve flagged or saved in News Bins, with just a few clicks. For someone in the news and technology business, that’s a huge benefit.
FeedDemon offers a free 30–day trial and works with just about any Windows version. Highly recommended.
Update: Marc Orchant has more details in this ZDNet post. He also notes that the price of FeedDemon includes a one-year NewsGator Online Premium subscription.
Ed Bott 
Thanks for that Ed … I’m going to give that a go!
Adrian
Thanks, Ed – we definitely appreciate the good review!
… or I would do if I could buy it in the UK … 😦
I long ago purchased FeedDemon, and agree that the latest version is quite good. But I continue to prefer Omea Reader, for several reasons. (1) It lets you set on a per-feed basis whether to show the summary or go to the original Web site. (2) It has a good built-in NNTP reader function. (3) It can also check for updates in ordinary Web pages that do not have RSS feeds.
If you need the synch feature, FeedDemon (or RSS Bandit, which is free) may be preferable. But the free Omea Reader better suits my own approach to keeping up with the world. Unfortunately, it is largely an unknown program, which may eventually spell its doom.
I’m back as a user now that Greg Reinacker (Newsgator’s owner) decided to drop the disastrous subscription-based licensing model. And check out the CTRL+SHIFT+J keyboard shortcut!
I tried FeedDemon long ago, but moved away from all the various client-based apps in favour of Bloglines. I find it so much easier to have everything synchronised via this web service. Sure, their UI is a bit weak, but it does the job well and generally stays out of my way. It’s free, too!