I read your post titled “9 Reasons …” and Omea has everything you listed.

Let’s face it, what we both want is something that is both online AND offline.

Now here might be an advantage for GreatNews: It (supposedly) integrates with Bloglines. If this is the case, then it might have an online/offline advantage over Omea, Google Reader, just about all readers. (I’ll have to try this when I get some spare cycles.)

Also, and this is purely a personal preference, I like the Omea UI much, much more than the GreatNews UI.

I have tried Omea before but did not use it for a long time because I wasn’t into blogging then. After I started blogging, I needed a portable feed reader because I am offline a lot of times. I started using GreatNews for that reason and just found out how rich the features were. If Omea was portable (I don’t think it is) or for that matter if there is a better portable feed reader, I am all for trying it. I love trying out new stuff but GreatNews has stuck with me for almost 5 months now.

Not trying to link spam here but I wrote a post at Blog About Your Blog (linked to my name) about why a blogger should use a Deskop Reader and lot of the features I talk about are based on GreatNews. If you get a chance to read it, I would love to get a feedback from you if it compares with Omea. You never know.. you might change my mind about GreatNews.

BTW, I’m going to give Fastladder a try, too. Thanks for the HT.

I have linked to my post in my name. Let me know what yu think.. Cheers.

If you like web based feed readers, the new Fastladder looks pretty sweet. I just wrote about it too, if you’re interested.

I’d choose Omea Pro, which can optionally be integrated with Microsoft Outlook. It requires the .NET Framework, but does NOT require integration with Microsoft Outlook … although if you use Outlook, it’s a great feature.

Omea Pro is EXTREMELY powerful. It’s amazing that it’s free, but I suspect that their developers are offering it for free as a way to generate revs for their other products and services.

If you do NOT use Outlook, I’d download the basic version. But if you use Microsoft Outlook, then download the Pro version. I keep saying “Microsoft Outlook” rather than “Outlook” in order to avoid possible confusion since “Outlook Express” doesn’t fully integrate with the Pro version.

BTW, I run Pro, but do NOT use either Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express (I use Thunderbird coupled with Gmail). So, you could use the Pro version even if you don’t use MS Outlook, although the basic/standard version might be a better (i.e., simpler) choice because it has fewer options than the Pro version and you can’t take advantage of all the Pro features unless you use MS Outlook.

I’ve been using Omea for several months and I like it better than all other options (and I’ve tried over 20). I’m currently trying GreatNews, but so far, I’m not too impressed. Not bad, but not great … and certainly not as good as Omea.

For free online readers, I use both Google Reader and Bloglines, but I find that with Omea, Bloglines is more useful. For one thing, e-newsletters (matter of fact, anything sent to an e-mail address) is easily integrated into Bloglines. VERY nice feature. Also, I run searches within my public Bloglines blogroll, create RSS feeds from those searches, and then input them back into another Bloglines account, into my various Google Reader accounts and (of course) my Omea reader.

The advantage of doing this is that I’m able to search within “approved” sources, i.e., sources that I’ve already found useful, but can’t really read on a regular basis. (There are nearly 700 feeds on my public Bloglines blogroll.) But this is much, much better than simply searching for results among ALL blogs; way, way too much noise with this option.

My public Bloglines blogroll: http://www.bloglines.com/public/DSL (over 600 feeds)

Also, http://www.bloglines.com/public/QBL (about 200 feeds; a subset of “DSL”) and http://www.bloglines.com/public/bestonchina (20 of the best feeds covering China, where I live; a subset of “QBL”).