Newsgroup/Usenet Query.

[chris h]

I wonder how many site members take advantage of the newsgroup/usenet resource. Friends unfamiliar with it are surprised when they get around to trying it out and seeing the variety of information available. All you need to access this resource is a reader (free) in the form of Agent, Xnews, Outlook X and I know Opera and Mozilla can handle them as well. All you need to know is the address of your ISP's news server and your away !

[Jakaleena]

I use usenet/newsgroups all the time. I'm subscribed to 8 groups. It's a good source of information, but you have to wade through a lot of poopie and be pretty thick skinned to survive it. I've found a lot of very nasty tempered sorts on there, but there are also some great sources of amusement too...

[G. Couch]

I use newsgroups occasionaly but like Jak mentioned, it gets a little nasty at times. The advantage of a forum like this is that the info and advice stays in one place! Those great little tidbits of knowledge, that Chris or Tom might have shared last October, are still there today and will continue to be there. (unless Doug's HD goes belly-up! ) One nice thing about newsgroups is that you can often find developers posting good info...Ed Hamrick comes to mind...unless he stopped posting due to the nastiness of some people!

[Jakaleena]

Originally posted by G. Couch
The advantage of a forum like this is that the info and advice stays in one place!

Actually, usenet posts are archived in one place too. You can search Google for just about any usenet post ever made since the history of time began... Ok, an exaggeration, but dang near everything ever said on usenet is still there for all to see... It's an incredible source of information!

[G. Couch]

I stand corrected! Learn something new everyday...I always just assumed the messages were trashed after a certain amount of time. Thanks Jak...although, had this been an actual Newsgroup you should have said, "No Greg! you are a fool..you are wrong!!"....

[chris h]

You've probably got it Greg but here's the Google Groups search engine for interested parties..................

http://groups.google.com/

Some of the groups are pretty fierce, I'm interested in your civil war and subscribed to the relevent groups for a while ! Those groups were more dangerous than the original battles.

[DannyRaphael]

As a general rule I'm not a frequent user of these resources. Mostly resort to them when searching for obscure tech advice.

The Corel site came in particularly handy when I was struggling with a Painter 7 problem.

[OhThatGirl2001]

I hate to admit it, but I'm a Newsgroup junkie. I find that our local cable company has a 3-4 retention on it's posts. I know that other NG servers have different retentions. I once tried a subscription to supernew and easynews and found they keep posts for a week or longer.

You can find anything from scanner advise, photoshop, paintshop pro and of course my favorite... sounds.mp3.

I'm addicted! HELP!

Lisa
P.S. I met Fugitive (my good buddy) in the PSP Newgroup!

[G. Couch]

Originally posted by chris h
Those groups were more dangerous than the original battles.

Try living in the southern part of the US! Some people here still think that war is going on.

[Doug Nelson]

I do use usenet, but it makes me sad.

[Guest]

10-4 good buddy.
On the PSP news group, you can get answers from actual PSP employees, not the flunkies, the designers and programers. It's quite a resourse, that I dont think one can get from Adobe or Corel and definiatly not MS.

[jeaniesa]

I usually only go to the newsgroups when I'm researching a particular technical question or trying to find how many negative references there are to a particular product/brand/service. I find that I just don't have enough time to keep up with the newsgroups, but I go to the google archive (used to be dejanews.com - and that not points to the google archive) when I want to research something. VERY helpful and a TON of information!!

And if I don't find what I'm looking for, then I will post something, but not until after an exhaustive search to make sure that I'm not asking a question that has already been answered a dozen times before.

Jeanie

[d_kendal]

I don't have enough to really follow newsgroups, but if I'm looking for something I'll search on Google groups and I can usually find what I need. one of my favorite groups is alt.comp.freeware, but there's a lot of flaming that goes on if anybody even mentions shareware / demo-ware etc.

- David