Because so many of the people I talk to are just getting their feet wet with RSS use, I make a lot of recommendations as to which feed reader or aggregator is the best for them.

Here’s my review of a handful:

FeedDemon
I love this desktop feed reader.  It’s robust and the extra features don’t impede the usability for a novice.  They’ve taken pains to make it easy to import/export your subscriptions and the cost of around $30 per year is negligible.

GreatNews
Again, another robust and open feed reader that’s desktop based. However, GreatNews is free and has made the effort to import Bloglines’ subscriptions, specifically, and they’ve taken quite a few Bloglines customers with this tactic.  Recommend

Bloglines
While this is the web’s most popular feed reader, it’s just not feature-rich enough for the power user. I used to suggest all my clients start with Bloglines because it was so easy, and then transition to another reader if they found it was not fancy enough, but because Bloglines makes it so difficult to export your OPML file of subscriptions, I am no longer recommending this reader.

Newsgator
Great web-based reader. Easy.  Open export/import.  They also have some neat Outlook integration if you want to pull your feeds offline.  Recommend.

Attensa
For the business user, this $20 per year solution is the best option, in my opinion.  They have merged the desktop reader with the online reader and have made almost real-time syncronization possible.  For the person who isn’t always at the same computer, but doesn’t want to ALWAYS have to depend on an online reader, this is their best bet.  You get the best of both worlds (online and offline feeds) with Attensa.  And, they are working on Attensa mobile.  When that comes out I’ll try it and let you know what I think of it. Recommend

There’s not a feed reader here I wouldn’t use and recommend, however, there are plenty out there that didn’t make this list that I wouldn’t recommend.

What are your favorites?