Reference from this thread.
It’s been five years since I started surfing the web but can you believe I’ve never used Usenet and newsgroups? I’ve only used Google groups, Yahoo groups and message boards like this but that’s all.
I only have my PC, my internet connection, IE6 and Outlook.
Some helping hand to tell me what I must do next?
Thanks in advance.
Google groups are Usenet. A site called DejaNews used to index the content of all non-binary newsgroups. Google bought them and made the service interactive.
That said, from the information in the other thread, you want access to binary newsgroups, to which Google does not provide access.
That means you need a standalone newsreader (or, if you’re a masochist, the Outlook newsreader). You may or may not have to pay money to access Usenet. Many ISPs have their own news server or a contract with a major news provider that allows the ISP’s clients access to the service for free.
You’ll have to check your ISP’s website to find out the address for their NNTP server. Often, this is buried deep within their and you really have to dig for it. If this doesn’t work, call them and ask if they maintain a news server.
If they don’t, you’ll have to pay. For binary news services that have long article rentention, expect to pay about $10/month for 6GB of downloads… Some with shorter rentention times offer unlimited downloads for $15-20/month, but those companies usually provide spotty service and a lot of incomplete binaries. Generally, if you’re using your ISP’s free server, this is what it will be like. Some ISPs are even worse in that they have poor service, low retention, missing posts, and a download cap. There are also ISP’s that filter out popular binary groups for various reasons.
If you’re just looking for one specific file and don’t want to pay a monthly fee for something you won’t be using in the future, I’d recommend the Teranews “free” service. It’s a one-time fee of $4, and you get 50MB/day for downloads and unlimited uploads forever.
Also note that “subscribing” to a newsgroup is much more like a bookmark for a web site than a subscription to a magazine. Since there are tens of thousands of groups, you subscribe to a few that you like so you don’t have to scroll through that huge list to find them again. Nobody on the newsgroup knows that you have subscribed. Like a bookmark, the subscription setting is entirely local to your computer.
See here for some guides to using the newsgroups. For a news reader, I’d recommend the freeware Xnews.
Well, you can use Outlook… open it up, and go to the Tools menu. There should be an option there for Newsgroups (may vary depending on your version of Outlook or Outlook Express). Once you get there, you’ll need the address of your ISP’s News server. You may have to call your ISP to get this, unless it’s somewhere in your paperwork from the ISP.
Once you set up your news account, you’ll need to download all of the available newsgroups (and there are a LOT, so it may take some time, expecially if you’re using a slower dial-up connection). Eventually, all of them will be downloaded, and you can choose which ones you want to subscribe to.
It’s actually pretty easy to do once you have the address of the ISP’s news server… and there are lots of interesting news groups to look at!
Good luck!
As indicated in my previous post, I’d strongly advise against using Outlook for downloading binaries. The most compelling reason for this is that most binaries these days are yEnc encoded for lower overhead. You’ll have go through the hassle of using an external program to decode these if you use Outlook.
With Xnews and most other news clients that try to actually keep up with technology, yEnc support is built-in, completely transparent, and you won’t have to worry about it at all.
Downloading the list of groups may very well take a few minutes on dialup, but DSL and cable connections will generally be able to get the whole list in less than a minute. And you only have to download it once. For the hell of it, I just downloaded all of my server’s groups again and timed it. 23 seconds for 32,103 groups.
Note that common web browsers also can read newsgroups (once set up). But like OE, what a pain.
For PC software:
If you only want to read newsgroups I suggest Forte FreeAgent.
For downloading binaries, I strongly suggest Newsbin Pro.
I like xrn for X-windows based systems for reading.
Thanks to everyone, I’ll try some of that.
giganews is also a very good newsgroup server and is reasonably priced. Tremendous retention.
Here’s some how to advice for a previous post -
Y’all might try Bubba News too - same kind of deal.
There is also Biggulp free, unlimited, but veeeerry sloooowww (might not be an issue on dial-up) - good a “fill” server if you use newbin, xnews or another reader that can have lots of servers active at once.