Newsgroups / Newsreaders

[MX]

I want to work with an alt.***** newsgroup but have no idea what I am doing when it comes to this stuff. I have IE7, Firefox 2.0 and MS Office 2007. I hate Outlook so if we could stay away from that it would be great.

This came up in the skateboarding thread in the sports forum, and thought I might be able to get more help in the lobby. If anyone can help me set this up I would be a very happy old school punk rocker......

Thanks

Tim

 

[DePasta]

I want to work with an alt.***** newsgroup but have no idea what I am doing when it comes to this stuff. I have IE7, Firefox 2.0 and MS Office 2007. I hate Outlook so if we could stay away from that it would be great.

This came up in the skateboarding thread in the sports forum, and thought I might be able to get more help in the lobby. If anyone can help me set this up I would be a very happy old school punk rocker......

Thanks

Tim

I use a free program called Xnews. It is a lot easier to use than browsers. Need to set it up for your News server (usually newsgroups.servername.com or something like that). There are lots of tutorials on the net for it. Download the list of groups and subscribe to the one(s) you want to use. I prefer to use a split screen view to view articles which can be changed via the "view" option.

 

[BrewMeister]

Tim,

Finding a reliable newsgroup server is becoming a bit of an issue now-a-days. Back in the days of the small ISP and dial-up, most ISPs provided a newsgroup server, today in my experience not many do, and many of the public access ones are fairly unreliable, and there are a few paid versions out there.

I've found that most of the old NEWSGROUPS are available via Google. If the one you are interested in is available no special software is required. And you can set it up to email you any new posts to the groups. Such as - alt.smokers.cigars.

Hope that helps. BTW - be careful if you go into the wild and woolly world of newsgroups, it is one of the last unmoderated places on the net, viruses and scams galore. Don't ever post with your real email address in the clear, the SPAMBOTS will over-load your mailbox in a day. :laugh:

 

[Rob_k]

I second the Xnews reccomendation, and take what Brew said very seriously. Newsgroups are sort of dwindling in popularity, with the advent of forums on the web vs. message boards on the news servers, now that everyone pretty much has broadband connections.
Be careful, and remain as anonymous as possible, it will save you a ton of spam in the long run.
Rob

 

[jgohlke]

I participated in ASC early in my cigar hobby. It was a good place to start learning about cigars and meet some folks. Unfortunately, it was for a long time, totally overrun by trolls. You can filter them out, but it got to be a pain.

The "be careful" advice is right on the money.