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You should think of the newsgroups as a huge
bulletin board with sections for different topics. Each of these different
topics is known as a newsgroup, and many of these newsgroups allow for binary
attachments to share files of all types. Collectively, these newsgroups are
known as the Usenet, and with more than 60,000 different newsgroups currently
available (more are being added every day), Usenet is constantly growing. For
more information on Usenet or to view the FAQ (rules) of a specific group,
browse over to www.faqs.org
and follow the Usenet References link.
*** CAUTION ***
Newsgroups are not censored in any way.
There are more than 60,000 newsgroups available to choose from, many of which
are adult-oriented. If you are concerned about your children having access to
these newsgroups, you may wish to consider the installation of 3rd-party
monitoring software such as Net
Nanny.
First, we need to open up Outlook Express. Once
it's open, click on Tools, then select Accounts. This should bring up the
Internet Accounts window. Select the News tab. You should see a screen that
looks like this:
Now, click on the Add button to the right and
select News. This will take you through a Wizard. On the first screen, it will
ask you for a name to display.
We would suggest that you do not use your real
name as newsgroups are accessible by anyone with news access throughout the
entire world. Once you have typed in a Display Name, click on the Next button.
On this screen, you will be prompted to enter
your email address. Be aware that email addresses posted to the newsgroups are
easily utilized by mass-emailing companies that can and will spam you. Since
USA2net allows you five email addresses per account, it may be a good idea to contact
us and request an additional email address that you would not mind if it got
on mass-mailing lists. Once you enter your email address, click on the
Next button.
This takes you to the most important part of the
newsgroup account creation - setting up the news server. Edit your screen to
match the one above exactly and then click on the Next button. This is the end
of the account creation section. This will take you back to the Internet
Accounts window. Note that you now have a News account in the News tab.
Now that we've got the news account setup, you
can click on the Close button to close the Internet Accounts window. Once you've
done that, Outlook Express will prompt you to download newsgroups from the
account you just added. Select Yes and wait for it to download all the various
newsgroup names from the news server. Once it has completed that task, you will
see a screen that looks like this:
Now you can just use the scroll buttons to look
through the list to find groups that interest you. Once you find a group you
like, highlight it by clicking on the group name, then click on the Subscribe
button to your right. To see newsgroups you've subscribed to, select the
Subscribed tab. Once you've scanned through the listings and subscribed to the
groups that interest you, click the OK button. You'll be taken back to your
Outlook Express main screen. Look in the Folders panel. You should now see
news.usa2net.net listed there, and you should see all the various groups you've
subscribed to branching off from the USA2net listing. To go back and subscribe
or unsubscribe to groups, click on news.usa2net.net in the Folders panel. Now
click on the Newsgroups button to the right. This brings up the window, shown
above, that will allow you to subscribe/unsubscribe newsgroups. To download
message headers for available messages within the group, click on the newsgroup
name in the Folders panel. Message headers will appear in the message listing
box. Clicking on a message will download that message and allow you to see its
contents.
Note: If you plan to utilize Usenet to download
binary files, it is strongly recommended that you download Free Agent from www.forteinc.com
- downloading files using Outlook Express is a very complicated process and will
NOT be covered here. For more detailed information about using Outlook Express
to access newsgroups, go to Microsoft's
OE Support Center.
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