fcojavaa

How do you go to internet newsgroups? Ever since I have been connected to the internet I have never curious enough about them. Where are they and how do you access them. Step by step if you please...

Windowphobe

Newsgroups grew out of Usenet, which dates to 1980; it's basically a collection of glorified message boards, although much of the traffic these days is either spam or "binaries" - encoded files which may be pictures, sounds, or whatever, but which are transmitted as text.

Some ISPs - not all - include newsgroup access as part of their regular Internet-access package. You'd want to check with your ISP first. If they don't have it, you can read many of the text messages on Google Groups, or you can buy third-party access.

Microsoft's email clients - Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail - also do newsgroups. I use a dedicated newsgroup client, Agent from Forte. Generally, to access a group you need to "subscribe" to it, which means only that it's in your download list; you then connect to the server. Most clients will default to downloading message headers only, giving you the opportunity to select and then read only the messages you want to read. This is essential, because daily newsgroup volume is somewhere around 5000 GB; the server I use offers, as of this writing, 106,807 different groups. I subscribe to only 34.

Windowphobe

Newsgroups grew out of Usenet, which dates to 1980; it's basically a collection of glorified message boards, although much of the traffic these days is either spam or "binaries" - encoded files which may be pictures, sounds, or whatever, but which are transmitted as text.

Some ISPs - not all - include newsgroup access as part of their regular Internet-access package. You'd want to check with your ISP first. If they don't have it, you can read many of the text messages on Google Groups, or you can buy third-party access.

Microsoft's email clients - Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail - also do newsgroups. I use a dedicated newsgroup client, Agent from Forte. Generally, to access a group you need to "subscribe" to it, which means only that it's in your download list; you then connect to the server. Most clients will default to downloading message headers only, giving you the opportunity to select and then read only the messages you want to read. This is essential, because daily newsgroup volume is somewhere around 5000 GB; the server I use offers, as of this writing, 106,807 different groups. I subscribe to only 34.