accessing newsgroups for beginners...

what are newsgroups?

Newsgroups are the internet's public thematic bulletin boards. Here anyone can write, and anyone else on the internet can answer. This cyber-democracy sometimes entails a low signal to noise ratio: a lot of garbage to wade through. But a good newsgroup can be focused, informative and can provide a virtual community. The sum of all newsgroups is sometimes refered to as the Usenet.

To access newsgroups, just type news: in the address space at the top of your browser or click here.

A new window labeled "news" should appear in front of this one (you might want to move the pages around so that you can consult both at once).

Once you've gotten the "news" window, look under Options, and select Show All Newsgroups

One likely reason is that your browser (Netscape or Explorer) isn't configured for news.

In Netscape go under Options and select Mail and News Preferences you should get a window that looks like this:

click on Servers and make sure that the bottom part is filled in with news dot followed by your internet server's name:

this might result in news.EARTHLINK.NET or news.MICRONET.FR or whatever

Under Edit select Options you should get a window

Select News and fill in your internet server's name

This might result in EARTHLINK.NET or MICRONET.FR or whatever

	^