Portable GreatNews

Portable GreatNews is an accessible and intuitive program created to offer a quick and simple method to check and read newsfeeds from your favorite webpages, as well as import the ones saved on your computer.

As the name suggests, the app comes packed with all the essential items in a small archive, which can be extracted on the PC, put on an external drive, and directly run on any computer. The layout is well-organized and clean,  sectioned into the category tree on the left part of the panel, and a basic web browser, on the right.

It comes with elementary controls, like navigational controls, home and bookmark buttons, and a style function to switch between brief, essay, newspaper, or readability modes. The app comes with predefined folder groups, such as blogs, Chinese bloggers, hardware and gadget, living, or top stories. To each one, you can enter a new subscription, based on its content.

To add a new feed, just input the URL, if it needs authentication, title, and the proper category. You can create new groups, by filling in the name, description, and website, if necessary. From the toolbar, you are able to update all the feeds with one click, mark specific ones or all of them as read, and filter them based on custom criteria.

It's possible to import and export news from and to OPML and XML files. From the options menu, you can choose a particular time interval for an automatic refresh, minimize to systray, and set the number of displayed news. Plus, the tool lets you use the Internet Explorer connection settings or a custom proxy server (URL, port, username, password).

Taking everything into account, Portable GreatNews is a useful and user-friendly application designed to provide an easy and uncomplicated way to check and read your favorite newsfeeds with minimal effort. Thanks to its portability it doesn't generate registry entries, nor leaves files after deletion.