Newsgroups Newbie
 

Ive been hearing loads about Newsgroups recently & started looking into it/them a bit more seriously. Waht to get movin but need som elp,
Do I have to pay for it? Does A usenet "client" work like a P2P client? Even google doesnt provide an understandable defenition of what a newsgroup is.
A few links woiuld help though.

First of all, before you continue to think that usenet is some kind of file sharing protocol, you should try looking it up on the Wikipedia. For future reference, it's a great source of information if you don't know about something.

If, after learning what usenet actually is, you still want to use it (it's a great resource and a wonderful way to communicate) then this FAQ/tutorial might help you...

Back in the day I was all over the usenet... But now it has lost most of its luster. It is rife with spam, virii and generally useless idiots.

Not the interweb isn't free from idiots but it is just more valuable in terms of the content I find there...

Thanks, Im reading up...

Well, some groups are bad while others are not. Would you mind telling us which groups you frequented that became flooded with spam, virii and generally useless idiots? I'm just curious... Thanks!

It depends on which USENET server(s) you use, also. Some are well filtered. I currently use Supernews, which gets rid of the definite crud before I see it.

Don't go praising Wikipedia TOO much. Users (anybody) can make pages on Wikipedia...usually without a moderated approval. That's how Wikipedia got in trouble when the new Pope was listed as "also known as Emperor Palpatine." on the /pope page. :) It's usually a good site, but many of the pages are made by people who have unknown reliability.

-Lasereth

Well, you're going to need a newsreader. I have used XNews for far too many years. http://www.onlythebestfreeware.com/p...program_id=104 There are plenty other readers, so download a few (most all of them are free anyway) and find the one that makes the most sense to you.

Is it free? Depends. For instance, with Comcrap cable, you will get 2G downloads every month. If this is not enough, or if you dont have Comc-asst cable, you can get connected for under $20 per month.
Try Giganews http://www.giganews.com
or Usenet monster at http://www.usenetmonster.com/index.asp.

There are tons of places like those two out there. I'll try to dig up a rating that I found last year that pits cost against speed. You'll also want to look for retention, which is the length of time articles tay on the servers. Moer retention = more complete servers. This is especially useful if you are trying to download movies or really huge articles. Usenet used to be nothing but pictures and text. Now people post movies, mp3, sounds, and the standard discussions.

I'll dig around here for some mroe info for ya.

I personally use Newsleecher for my reader and GIganews for the service provider. Giganews has just recently upgraded to 57 days of retention, which is just unreal.

Astraweb offers a nice pay-by-download service that you just pay a upfront fee and take as long as you want to use what you paid for. The only downside is that its got a 15 day retention.

At the moment(and for the lat two years) I use Newshosting in conjunction with Newzbin. Never had any problems with the Newshosting servers, always get the fastest DL speeds my connection will allow. Can't recommend it highly enough, in fact someone on here recommended it to me in the first place. The Newzbin site actually indexes Usenet so you can search for specific content and then download the .nzb file and open it using a compatible newsreader and it will get the files for you. If you need any more info on the way newzbin works or which newsreader to use go to Newzbin FAQ or Newzbin Forum

Just a side note, they only index what people submit.

There is much MUCH more then what newzbin shows.

Now that we've got past that, I would like to suggest Newzbin. I love it.

I used newzbin for a while in conjunction with RoadRunners servers, and all was well until people started killing the servers with incomplete uploads, tons of missing or corrupt data just got to be more trouble than it was worth, lucky it was all free to me. Also retention is a MUST to look into when picking a server RR retention was grabage many times not even getting 2-3 days out of stuff before it was gone.

I finally found the rating area I promised. Better late than never, eh? As always, take these rating with a grain of salt (and maybe a cracker..)

http://www.newsgroupservers.net/

Here is a link to some free Usenet servers. I have poked around on things like this for years, but most of the time free servers are either incredibly slow or have rather small groups that they serve. But still...free....
http://www.disenter.com/

For reference with free news servers: there are currently over 104,000 newsgroups out there.

NewsHosting FAQ
http://www.usenetforyou.com/provider/index.php

And a plug for UsenetMonster. No, I don't work there. Might be fun though.
http://www.usenetmonster.com/index.asp

I can't believe no one has mentioned EasyNews.com. They have almost every group imagineable, 45 day retention (atleast, I have gotten stuff that is that old), and 10 gigs a month for $9.98/mo. If you don't use all 10 gigs, they roll over the next month. They also have a slick web interface if you are into downloading binaries from groups.

If you are wanting to read/post messages, then use a traditional NNTP client like Agent or any of the others mentioned above.

Well, here is another list, courtesy of Yahoo. Just ran into this today.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Ec...senet_Servers/