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Old February 15th 05, 01:17 AM
Bill Putney
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Alex Rodriguez wrote:
> In article >, says...
>
>>
>>My ISP is small. They contract a 3rd party for the newgroups. They've
>>been thru 3 or 4 in the last year because the ones they try out have
>>been lousy. From what they tell me, very, very few of their subscribers
>>use or care about newsgroups, and I get the feeling that their
>>maintaining that capability is a PITA for them - they only keep it to
>>keep from losing a handful of customers.
>>
>>They even told me that AOL dropped neswgroup capabilities recently. I
>>commented back that that seemed more a reflection of AOL than on the
>>viability of NG's. They also said that other ISP's are telling them
>>that they dropped NG's long ago.
>>
>>Can anyone add to this info.? Will NG's fade away in the
>>not-too-distant future? What are my options for stand-alone NG read and
>>post capability (besides Google)? I like using the E-mail browser for NG's.
>>
>>Thanks for any suggestions.

>
>
> No, newsgroups won't fade away. One reason is that some websites have set up
> web front ends for newsgroups that new users find easier to use. That means
> that you can use a web browser to read newsgroups. This gives the ISP the
> false impression that newsgroups are no longer being used, when they are still
> being used. They are just being used with a different tool. I don't like the
> browser interface and the fact that using a browser is much slower than using a
> newsreader.


Yes - being left with only a web browser option concerned me. If it
came to that, I would probably just forego ng's.

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