PAN, the ' Forte Agent Clone', is not as good as Agent on the same hardware IMHO (and I've used both quite a bit).
Like, on more than one Linux machine I've installed / configured / opened PAN and it's hung for ages, to the point where I've attempted to open it several times, only to give up and eventually see several instances of PAN open ages after.
Now, even if the setting was 'get new messages for subscribed newsgroups on open', there wouldn't be more than two or three groups and so not that many message (headers).
Agent, even on this single core Mac Mini running XP is nearly instant under any / all circumstances?
Plus I don't think I could configure PAN to emulate my preference where it marks any new threads, or threads with new messages or new messages in an already open thread, since the last check, in (say) red (not to say it;s not possible with a rule / configuration).
However, it's probably the most useable Usenet client I've found for Linux ... my needs / experience so far but I think I now prefer Thunderbird on Linux for it's predictability, even though it's not as nice / familiar.
Cheers, T i m