I gave this software a try after it was added to ProductWiki. Keep in mind, I'm not a heavy RSS user, but I do have several feeds that I monitor from NetVibes and Google Reader. At first, I would have to say that I was a bit underwhelmed by the experience, but once I tried out the "Outlook-style" reading, I found this be a better experience for me, and I warmed up to the product after that. I'm curious to hear what power RSS readers have to say about FeedGhost.

Thanks for the review Erik! And before I reply further, a disclaimer to anyone else reading: I'm one of the authors of FeedGhost.

I think you're absolutely right that for a "casual" RSS user, free tools such as (say) Google Reader are a better bet. We're aiming this product at people who read a lot of feeds, and hence a lot of articles per day. An analogy might be this: for casual email, GMail works fine. For business/heavy email use, Outlook might be a better choice. I subscribe to about 200 feeds, which gives me (coincidentally) about 200 articles to look at per day. Using FeedGhost, I can get through them in about half an hour to an hour. I find prioritizing my reading really helps here, a feature (I believe) doesn't exist in Google Reader.

Finally, a couple of specific points:

• "Can't easily access previously-read items" - these are accessed by expanding the articles list. Read items appear in normal (non-bold) type. Alternatively, the search facility displays results from both read and unread items.
• "Links don't open in external browser by default" - agreed, not by default, but there is an option to control this behaviour.

I was told about this RSS reader by a friend and figured it to be yet just another stock standard reader. But after a few hours of use I was converted and place my order for the paid service. It is without a doubt, the king of RSS readers...feature-rich, stable and above all very user friendly! I don't go anywhere without my FeedGhost...a must have for all RSS geeks!

I like the iGoogle/Google Reader/Google Homepage. I'd give this a try, but I normally don't have internet on my personal computer, and have to use my family one. There is a cool add-on button for Firefox that open your iGoogle Hompage in a sidebar. I use that a lot.

How does this stack up against aiderss.com ?