For those of you on Bell Sympatico, be aware that usenet ends on May 25

Hi RS,

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Go to Google Groups and you have free access... I see this group here-

A posting I made several minutes ago was there.

I find web-based news reading and posting way too time-consuming and clunky. E-mail reader is a lot faster for everyday reading and posting. Google is good for searching the archives though.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Additionally, Google only updates about once every 24 hours. The old Deja-News was real-time.

If you want real-time access and fast answers, then going to a proper news-reader with a proper news service is the only way now.

Google is awesome for historical searches, but is far from real-time.

As I said, I did a posting from my MT-Newswatcher and google had it in minutes.

I do use a NewsWatcher program as my Telus provides very good News Group support, but if your ISP doesn't provide News support Google is a good alternating.

You're out of date, see above.

Google also updates in real-time, within minutes to even less than a minute. But during peak times or heavy usage, the updates can take hours. In the worst of cases, it's usually a few hours for me. It's extremely rare that it's more than that.

If your access to Google shows updates every 24 hours, that might be a function of your ISP and not Google, per se. Can I ask what is your ISP and whether you are on a dialup or what?

If you are on a fast access method, like aDSL or cable, it could be that you only post during peak times and then it seems as though it is taking 24 hours? You post, it takes about 6 or 7 hours, go to sleep, don't check until the following evening sort of thing? This is just a guess on my part. I have posted and gotten return posts in minutes during non-peak times so Google can be awfully fast at times.

I'm on Cable High-Speed.

Posting via news.individual.net and reading posts, is instantaneous. Absolutely ZERO lag either way.

I will admit, it has been a couple of years since I tried posting with Google. Mostly that was because of the absolutely AWEFUL and CRYPTIC interface that they shoved down our throats after ditching the Deja-News interface.

I would indeed hope that they DID improve on that piece of crap. Perhaps they have. But the service is soooo good with news.individual.net, that it will likely be a LONG time before I ever consider trying Google for postings again. They took something good - DejaNews - and ruined it. So users like me had to find another way. When that other way is rock solid, lightnig fast, and inexpensive, then Google has lost a customer.

As I said, I hope they have improved posting and refresh times. This would be better for everyone. But I usually use Google as a research tool / search engine. In that mode, real-time access is not critical.

For anyone who wants a freebie interface your welcome to go to either of these:

(reading only) (permits posting and reading) If it ever becomes a problem I'll pull them down, of course. But my experience is that they generally aren't. And unlike Google they aren't stuffed full of banner adverts.

Ted