Usenet Explorer

I always start the downloads at 1-4 Mbps.
After a minute it always drops down to 1 mbps and holds there.
When I use Newsbin it consistently holds at 8 Mbps.
Is there a setting somewhere I am not seeing?

Check how many tasks you have running. Properties->Tasks will let you determine the totals. Find out how many run in Newsbin and match the amount of article tasks in UE.

I did.
I have 20 like I do in Newsbin.

did you check in the right place how many actual tasks are running?

in UE you see the actual number of article tasks in the task manager, the next pane to the right of the "articles" pane, the double computer icon, if you have one server it will be at most the number of tasks set for that server (unless the operall total tasks for all servers is less than the number).

e.g. if you set server tasks to 3 (edit menu->properties->servers) and the total tasks to 20 (edit menu->properties->tasks, total) and you only will see 3 tasks at most. the same you need to check in the other program if you can (since sometimes more connections may lead to slower speed), what i remember in newsbin at some point there was 8 threads maximum, i'm not sure what is the number now, i think they keep several threads constantly running as task holders and there is a maximum amount.

also you need to check you didn't exceed the allowed number of tasks on the server (again if in UE you are running more tasks), then at least in the console pane of the task manager you'll see "mishaps", with the message the maximum number of connection exceeded. for such servers with very strict usage policies and not fair connection manager like giganews you need to set the maximum number of tasks less than the officially allowed number of tasks.

other the differences i think UE is capable of reusing connections, if it is not number of tasks you can try to uncheck keep alive in properties->general (in case it is malfunctioning server which cannot reuse connections and pauses instead), then also there may be firewall issue, but i cannot speculate until you confirm it is not something from above.

the speed in UE is not limited, for article tasks it will be the same as any other newsreader which is not seriously flawed (since it is easy task to implement from the performance point of view) and as to header tasks for large newsgroups UE will be significantly faster on large newsgroups comparing to any other newsreader/binary downloader program, since UE framework was written after the usenet header volume explosion, and all others newsreaders didn't go for full revamp (because it is very expensive in development time, nzb files/sites shifted some users to search, usenet growth slowed etc.).

and the last thing: UE shows speed in MB - MBytes per second, if the other program reading is mbps - megabits per second, 1 MB/s = 8 mbps, given you cite the 8 times difference i wonder whether it is the answer.