"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
.com...
On 6/13/2009 11:14 PM JeffM spake thus:

Arfa Daily wrote:

[...]what exactly do you see as being the problem
with using OE's newsreader client ? I have[...]always used OE
for posting to and reading from basic text groups
[...]it has never caused me the slightest problem.
I know people on usenet often say "don't use OE ...",[...]
but I have never managed to get anyone to specify exactly what
dire consequences you are going to suffer by using it ??

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...th.every.penny
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....xpr ess&fwc=2
http://groups.google.com/group/24hou...-this-*-*-flaw
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.s...utlook.Express
http://google.com/search?q=cache:jA9...*+unable#ss3.1
http://google.com/search?q=cache:I4N...&strip=1#quila

Thanks for that. It's worth quoting a bit of some of those messages:


The root problem is that outlook express is a decent email client, but
totally and horribly *SUCKS* as a news reader. Think about it for a
moment. Something as trivial as someone on the other side of the world
having their clock mis-set causes thousands of OE users to fiddle with
kill filters, post angry flame messages, and whine endlessly about the
evils of "future posting."

Why should it be so difficult to delete a single message? Other news
readers have no problem dispatching individual messages in different
ways. The rest of the world is not going to stop making errors, and
everybody else isn't going to quit (intentionally or unintentionally)
posting messages with future dates just because you choose to use a
broken news reader. If you feel you must have some feature only
available in OE then you need to recognize that you've chosen a news
client that doesn't handle future dated posts very well due to it's
poor design, and stop whining and complaining about it. Otherwise get
a real news reader and enjoy usenet.

OutlookExpress is free, and worth every penny of it.

==================================================

I see two hyphens there - it's the notorious broken sig dash that
Microsoft seem incapable of correcting, and TheRed is posting her
entire messages underneath it. Outlook Express victims can't be
expected to know anything about it; it's necessary to use a real
news-reader to understand the problem. Until I did that, I didn't
know that there was such a thing as a 'signature' that wasn't just
another bit of text. I can remember being surprised and delighted at
the way real news-readers work; till then I'd just assumed that OE
was showing me usenet as it really is and that everyone had to mess
around trying to make sense of it all.

I have yet to try a news-reader that's worse than OE.


And finally, if any was needed, further reasoned argument that top-posting
and sloppy quoting SUCKS:

It should be noted that Micro$oft programs in general encourage you to
top post, do not encourage QUILA[*] and do not properly mark quoted text.
Seasoned email users generally do not therefore use
Micro$oft programs. However top posting discourages proper reading of
emails so the proper flow of question, answer, counter-question etc.
does not occur. This makes technical support via top-posting
inefficient and tedious!

[*] QUILA = Quote and in-line answers


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism


Well, I'm sure that all of those are very real 'problems' for the more
pedantic users, but for the average user, who is used to using OE for doing
his e-mailing, the main one that is going to cause any real issue, is top
posting. Whilst I agree that top posting is a pain in the arse when applied
to newsgroup posts, I really don't think that it is an issue for e-mail
where, in general, it is two people 'talking', who already each know what
they said, and what the reply is referring to. I actually think that in this
case, it is more appropriate to have the reply on top of the original
message.

I also think that a lot of fuss about the foibles of MS programs, is born
out of Gates bashing ...

Still, I know that this is a contentious subject, and I don't want to get
dragged into a drawn out argument about it. I was interested to see what the
perceived problems were, and that has been answered for me. Thanks for that
gentlemen.

Arfa