I've been using Google Groups, but it has no filters.
I'm tired of sorting out the legitimate posts from the spam.
Can anyone recommend a good (preferably free) news reader that will work with Windows Vista?
I'm not really a bit-head, so installation needs to be close to point and click.
Thanks, and will be seeing you...
Old Guy
I don't know if it works with Vista, but MicroPlanet Gravity has been very good to me. Two drawbacks: I can't figure out how to change the color on threads I've responsed to, and the right click doesn't work for copying, pasting, &c.
S.
Windows Mail works fine (don't let the name fool you, it handles USENET just fine) and it's included with Vista. There's a freeware add-in called "OE-Quotefix"
"Jim Behning"
I agree. Although I usually use Outlook for general email, like you I use Agent 4.2 for all my uploading and downloading. It has a number of improved features over the V1.9 that I was using previously.
Years ago I would have said use Forte Free Agent, but it has been discontinued. Probably your best bet is to use Thunderbird for both usenet and mail.
Ironically, one of the first things you might want to do when you leave Google Groups is filter out all posts from @google.com. That's where 90% of the usenet spam is coming from these days.
Colin
Thunderbird is free.
I'm using it as I type. Do you mean that the free version is not available for new suscribers?
It does not, however, have filters in the free version.
Probably your best bet is to use Thunderbird for both
Just curious whets the matter with Outlook ? Its already on your computer, It's free. It's easy and it has filters. Puff
There is no free version. It was discontinued years ago. The "Free Agent" that you can find occasionally is abandonware. The only product Forte has now is "Agent", which you can use for free as annoyware--the disabled features aren't hidden and every time you inadvertently click on one it comes up with an ad for the for-pay product.
Not Outlook, Outlook _Express_--different products, with no real relation between them except that both are from Microsoft, both do email, and both have "Outlook" in the name. You have to buy Outlook and it doesn't have NNTP support without a third-party add-in. On Vista, Outlook Express is no longer called that but is now "Windows Mail".
Some people give the impression that they would rather die than use Outlook Express and Internet Explorer--I don't understand the mindset that gets that distraught about such things, but some people do.
Old Guy wrote in news:7ae265af-e63d-43a0-8a31-6e447b8971ee@
13g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:
I like Xnews... but you don't need just a new newsreader. You need a news provider to use with the newsreader. Your ISP may provide NNTP access, or if they're like Wildblue they'll dump you off to Google Groups.
Puckdropper
For years, Outlook (and Outlook Express) didn't follow the various mail RFCs. In other words, they were clients for Windows mail, not Windows clients for email. Microsoft used them to try to usurp the platform-neutral nature of email. Also, they had such lovely "features" as auto-open attachments. Before Outlook came along, there were hoax emails that went around claiming, "DO NOT OPEN AN EMAIL MESSAGE WITH THE SUBJECT (whatever)!!! IT WILL DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER!!!" Those of us in computing laughed and grimmaced turnabout at the stupidity of such messages--that is, until Microsoft made such behaviour possible and even quite likely. Then add the amazing number of years its taken them to make a product that STILL isn't stable, and the fact that spam proliferation is predominantly based on Outlook/OE holes, and I have enough justification to remove it from any PC I own. (And that doesn't even bring up the issue of default HTML email--or just how badly MS generates HTML.)
As for IE, similar concerns: They've aggressively added non-standard extensions to HTML, such that websites designed for IE don't work in a standards-compliant browser. Web pages that are designed for IE, aren't really web pages--they're Windows application documents, and have no business being published on port 80, which is reserved for the web.
Oh yeah, then there's the fact that IE is tied directly into the kernel, which makes it easier to either trash or take over the user's computer.
Between IE and OE, I blame Microsoft for making spam and virus-writing profitable. Given that roughly 90% OF ALL EMAIL TRAFFIC is now spam, and that the spam is predominantly generated by the Russian mafia, I'd say that Microsoft has some 'splainin' to do.
As for why I get distraught about it, well it's my job. I'm a Unix admin. :-)
Colin
That's all a perfectly good justification for an anti-MS religion/philosophy.
My desktop will be Windows-based for the foreseeable future for practical, not philisophical reasons.
OE is still pretty decent newsreader.
-Steve
"Colin B." wrote
Yeah, well ... about 20+ years ago I gave up my priestly robes and embraced Windows. It's arguably made my _personal_ computing/online life much simpler (and cheaper than previously possible) despite its many shortcomings.
... not to mention that it's difficult to imagine my 86 year old mother 'spamming the family' on anything else. :)
OE used to have a huge security hole--it would try to execute plain text [1] in the middle of a UseNet article. After several years MS issued a patch.
The sheer stupidity of writing software that does that, coupled with the irresponsibility of not fixing it, is one reason why so many people avoid it and other MS products, especially those that access the internet.
[1] If a line of text began with the word 'BEGIN' and that word was followed by a certain number of spaces or linefeeds (I don't remember which), OE would try to interpret and execute whatever followed. Unless the article was written with deliberate malicious intent the effect was usually to just not display the text that followed.Now you know why so many Usenet articles used to start with the word 'BEGIN'. Unless of course you were using OE, in which case you now know why so many appeared to be blank...
Oh good gosh, if Microsoft were not so easy to hack, Apple or Unix would be the next "easy" target. Be glad your job is to work with a less sought after target. If Microsoft and it's inept abilities to curb spam were to disappear tomorrow your job would become a nightmare 3 or 4 weeks later. The next most popular OS would be the target just like Microsoft is now.
You forgot to mention the versions of XP home that required the user to connect to MS over the internet and without any firewall or other protections in order to complete the installation. The ruesult was that many, if not most, installations of XP on home computers with high speed internet access were compromised with zombies use to propagate spam, viruses, and DDOS attacks during their initial installation.
Note XP was targeted JUST because it was common. XP was targeted because the Microsoft installation process REQUIRED that it be left open for abuse.
Thus demonstrating Heinlein's observation that there are degrees of incompetence or stupidity so extreme as to be indistinguishable from malice.
"Leon" wrote
While I never really bought into that argument because of the inherent difficulty of propagating malicious code at root level on a properly administered 'nix box, I do thank MSFT for the ubiquity of modern _PERSONAL_ computing, in spite of itself.
I was on the corporate side of the game when IBM was basically the only show in town and I $hudder to think of the cost of those days.
I agree that it would be harder, until some one like the 14 year old that hacked the I-phone came along and did his thing. ;~) 30 years ago there were many impossible things yet to be done. Today, now so many.
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