There ain't no news here.

First lets talk about what the news groups are, and are not. They are a means for people to pass messages to large groups. They are not a source of news.

By looking through the news groups you can get help, tips, information and some serious abuse. Most of the news groups are unmoderated, there is no control over their content. People 'post' messages and the message is displayed in the group regardless of what the message says.

So the first important point is, 'Don't believe everything you read in the news groups' While the majority of news group users are sensible, there are a few people who take pleasure in trying to cause problems and abuse others.

Having said that, there is much in the that can be useful. So, to get started.

There are a number of news readers available, some of them free. The most common is Microsoft Outlook Express, which is an email client as well, so this is the one that we will talk about.

Whichever one you choose the overall system is the same. When you create a news account, by setting the news server address and your username and password (often done by your Internet Service Provider's (ISP's) setup program), you will need to download the list of news groups carried by that server. Outlook Express prompts you to do this when a new news server is added.

In total there are over 40,000 news groups, so your ISP's server is not likely to carry them all, but ISPs usually carry more than 30,000. The names are often confusing. A general form is for the first part to denote the country, i.e. uk.abcde is a U.K. based news group, whereas ukr.abcde is a Ukraine based group. It won't take long to get used to the names, most are self explanatory like 'alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove' which is an actual group; for greasy-spoon lovers I presume.

When you have downloaded the list of news groups, you then 'subscribe' to a number of them. All this means is that you create a list of news groups that you are interested in. The shorter list is necessary as scrolling through 30,000 group names can take some time. Outlook Express helps in this process by having a search capability. You enter a word and a list of all the news groups whose title contains that word is generated for you.

Once you have your list of subscribed news groups then you can download the list of message titles in a group. With Outlook Express this is done by clicking on the group name in the folders window (which is visible on the left, if you still use the default setup).

In Windows, the number of message titles (or headers) that are downloaded at any one time is controlled using the 'Internet Settings' applet in the Control Panel.

Then to read a message, or look at a picture, just click the message title and it is downloaded for you.

You are free to reply to any message. You can either reply to the sender, this creates an email to the reply address of the person who posted the message, or you can reply to the group, which creates a new message to be 'posted' to the news group.

'Spam' is the Internet's equivalent to junk mail. You don't want it, you don't need it and it is irritating. If you use your real email address when posting to news groups, you will almost certainly start to receive spam. They use search programs to scan the news groups collecting email addresses for advertising purposes.

The settings for a news account in Outlook Express, includes the reply address to use for any message you post. It is important NOT to use your own email address for this. Most people add the words 'NO SPAM' to their email address. i.e. me@NOSPAM.myusername.myisp.co.uk. Try to use some other word or phrase.

When you reply to a sender, check the reply address before trying to send the mail, otherwise it may 'bounce' and you will find a message from the email sub-system informing you that the message could not be delivered.