Martin wrote
Ian Jackson wrote
Graeme wrote
Ian Jackson wrote

I'm presently trying Thunderbird, and I reckon it comes a pretty
good second (or maybe third) to Demon's Turnpike (which I've had
for the past 15 years). If I change ISP from Demon, I think I
would probably use it. [Thunderbird is free, and Turnpike would
then cost me £200!]

Interesting comment. I too am using Turnpike, but mentally
preparing for the day when I will no longer be able to do so.
Whilst there are many Turnpike features I'm sure I would miss, the
most important feature to me is the ability to properly thread both
Usenet AND mailing lists - Yahoo, etc.

Does Thunderbird have that facility, does anyone know? Or Agent, or ...?

I had both Thunderbird and Agent running at the same time, and (for
some reason) seemed to concentrate mainly on Thunderbird (which I've
still got running). Both give you a choice in how you can display the threads
etc, and they can be set to be pretty well the same as Turnpike.

I'd certainly give Thunderbird a try. You can run it in parallel with
Turnpike - just ensure that you tell it not to delete anything from
the server(s). Like Turnpike, you do need to play around a bit with
the general configuration (which is all part of the fun). One thing
it (apparently) lacks is the ability to use different news servers
for different newsgroups. Another (inexplicably) is an inability to
manually delete newsgroup postings (but there's an easy fix for this
in the configuration files). However, I haven't yet found any obvious
show-stoppers.

Thunderbird can't automatically filter out cross posted messages to
more than a user defined number of groups.

Yes, but now with usenet fading so dramatically, it can make sense to cross post now.

Makes a lot more sense than separately posting the same query to different groups
because cross posted posts do get marked as read in any decent news readeer.

Some groups that look clean using Agent appear
saturated with trolling when using Thunderbird.

You wouldnt know what real trolling was if it bit you on your lard arse.