In article
,
Higgs Boson wrote:

Straight question.

What is the purpose of paying for a newsreader? Is it to access news
groups? For that purpose, is Google really so awful? Esp, for
people who visit only a few NGs?

(Note: I had one of the BEST email clients for years -- Forte Agent.
Swift, powerful, sophisticated.
But when they discontinued NG access, I went to a Web-based email
client. I guess I could still use Agent just for email, but now I'm
sot in me ways.

Or do people pay for a newsreader to follow the news, period. If the
latter, why not just go to news sources on-line?

Have been puzzling about this for some time.

Enlightenment, anyone?

HB
HB

Uh, "news" as it relates to these forums has nothing to do with "news"
like stories of fires and wars and crime and traffic.

These are called "newsgroups" and collectively make up "usenet."
Companies that collect, store, and disseminate the "articles" that you
and I write and post here to alt.home.repair are called "news servers."
Some charge a small fee but many are free.

The software that resides on your computer that deciphers and organizes
and lets you work with all those articles from all those newsgroups is
called a "newsreader" and almost all of those are free to download and
install.

Usenet is not a web-based forum. It has to be *******ized to be made
world-wide-web compatible. You might have several pieces of software on
your computer: A word processor, a web browser, a photo editor, a
spreadsheet program, etc. The *correct* tool to read usenet is a
newsreader. You wouldn't use a spreadsheet program to write a letter,
and it's equally silly to use a web browser to participate in usenet.

So, if you want to get away from google's pathetically poor imitation of
usenet, you need to give up the idea of using a web browser to get here.
Find a news server, get a newsreader, and feel the joy.