Yesterday AOL flashed a message to all users clicking on newsgroups to the
effect that it would no longer support newsgroups as of "early 2005" (see
below).

When I inquired about this, AOL said this new policy "was based on user
feedback" -- yeah, like we've all been banging down AOL's door asking them to
reduce their service.

If you're an AOL user and you think this really stinks, use keyword "Tell Us"
and let those bastards hear from you.

----------------- actual text of AOL message ------------------------

Please Note: The AOL Newsgroup service will be discontinued in early 2005.


For members using AOL over a dial-up connection, you will no longer be able to
access Newsgroups. If you have a separate high-speed connection, you can
contact your broadband provider to see if they offer Newsgroups. Newsgroup
services can often be accessed through a third party reader, such as Mozilla
Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/).

Alternatively, you can access Newsgroups via Google at
http://groups.google.com/.

We apologize for this inconvenience.


Mike Yankee

(Address is munged to thwart spammers.
To reply, delete everything after "com".)

mikeyankee (AT) aol (DOT) comic.book (MikeYankee) wrote:
The only thing that will have any effect is if you vote with your
dollars. Tell them this is the last straw in their lousy service and
you are going elsewhere. As long as you stay, they've reduced their
service without reducing their income, so they've won. They'll keep
doing it until it starts to hurt THEM.

I'm seriously considering doing that, although I don't want to lose my
e-mail address. I've had the same one for 10 years.
The way AOL did newsgroups was one of the main reasons I stayed with
them. Although AOL's really not that bad once you beat it into shape.
I just went to DSL from dialup so I have an alternative, but I'm not
sure that BellSouth is an improvement. Everytime I go to the BellSouth
startup page (now replaced with Google Groups) it tried to install
spyware on my computer (prevented by Spybot Search and Destroy). And a
forum on BellSouth DSL has a lot of complaints about BellSouth and
newsgroups.
I really don't like the way Google Groups works. I can't tell what I've
read or not.

"laurak" <laurak (AT) madmousergraphics (DOT) com> wrote

Make a new email address now and start transitioning, after a few months
everyone will know your new one and you can dump AOL, they became worthless
once the internet really took off.

On 25 Jan 2005 17:03:32 -0800, laurak <laurak (AT) madmousergraphics (DOT) com> wrote:
You don't have to change email address to subscribe to a usenet
provider. Get connectivity through AOL, and sign up for a news
provider, and use any of the dozens of tools to access it while dialed
in to AOL.

Well, don't go to their startup page. No reason to keep your default
browser homepage set to them.

news.individual.net is free and very good. No binary groups, though.

Google is a great archive site, not such a good everyday use site.

Dave Hinz

"laurak" <laurak (AT) madmousergraphics (DOT) com> writes:

Use a normal Unix shell account and run something like 'nn' to read
newsgroups. Does auto-management of what's been read and what hasn't. No
lame graphical interface to contend with.

Newsgroups are after all meant to be a simple, text-based medium.

Craig.

--
Craig's Saab C900 Page --> http://lios.apana.org.au/~c900 Sydney, NSW Australia
Craig's Saab C900 Workshop -- For all Saab C900 Enthusiasts world-wide!
http://www.saab900classic.net http://www.saab900.org c900 (AT) lios (DOT) apana.org.au
Come and explore our site, and check out our web-forums, mailing list, etc.

Craig's C900 Site <c900 (AT) lios (DOT) apana.org.au> wrote in
news:ctrrjl$ob7$1 (AT) yoda (DOT) apana.org.au:

I've found an excellent free reader -- xnews -- that does exactly what I
want using the Bellsouth link which I've got anyway.
http://www.seegras.de/xnews/
Very nice piece of software. Fairly intuitive to setup if you're used to
playing around with things.

Craig's C900 Site wrote:
Groups.Google was once my only news source my the ISP at the time dropped
the news server. But Groups.Google had a slow turnaround for updating,
sometimes up to 24 hours. Good for reference though since all posts are
kept. Another problem: If someone changes the subject line, the thread
becomes disconnected as a separate thread is created. My advice in general
is therefore never to change the subject line. Likewise, top postings are
cumbersome to read in Google whereas bottom postings comes out more
naturally when you scroll down an entire thread.

Johannes H Andersen <johs (AT) sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssizefitter (DOT) com> wrote
in news:420619E8.27B1CCD8 (AT) sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssizefitter (DOT) com:

Use Xnews newsreader, a nice piece of freeware.
http://xnews.newsguy.com/
I'm using it with BellSouth.net newsgroups (which I have for DSL) and it
works great. You can get it to work exactly the way AOL did, where you show
just the unread posts. Also has a "mark all read." Posts show up as fast as
they did with AOL.
It takes a little tweaking to get it the way you want it and I had to do some
editing on the ini file to make the changes stick, but there are good
instructions on doing that here:
http://www.seegras.de/xnews/