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AOL dumps newsgroups

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

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Alternatively, you can access Newsgroups via Google at
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We apologize for this inconvenience.

Mike Yankee

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

Reply to
MikeYankee
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A good and free News server can be found at

news.individual.net

You have to register at

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first in order to getaccess to the server. /Bengt

Reply to
Bengt Österdahl

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.

Reply to
Gary Fritz

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.

Reply to
laurak

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.

Reply to
James Sweet

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

Reply to
Dave Hinz

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.

Reply to
Craig's C900 Site

Craig's C900 Site wrote in news:ctrrjl$ob7$ snipped-for-privacy@yoda.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.

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nice piece of software. Fairly intuitive to setup if you're used to playing around with things.

Reply to
Laura K

Other companies do similar things. They ask the wrong questions and get the worthless answers. Then a bunch of corporate morons who are too ignorant to realize the questions are wrong make an erroneous decision based on the useless and poorly designed questions.

Reply to
Bobo

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.

Reply to
Johannes H Andersen

Johannes H Andersen wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssizefitter.com:

Use Xnews newsreader, a nice piece of freeware.

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'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:
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Reply to
Laura K

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