For those of you on Bell Sympatico, be aware that usenet ends on May 25

I know some others here are on Bell Sympatico DSL. You might not be
aware yet, but Bell has announced they will turn off their usenet
server on May 25.

Another ISP drops usenet.

You can read more in DSLReports, or sympatico.highspeed.

 

And then switch to:

news.individual.net

10 Euros per year. ROCK SOLID.

No porno, no binaries. Kidsafe, and employer friendly.

 

I have to go with NewMan's suggestion. Check this ng's archives, and
you'll see my struggle with worthless free news servers as a backup to
my ISP's also worthless news server source - with the ISP's feed and two
free services as backup, I *still* had days of simultaneous down time
for all three supposedly unrelated servers.

At NewMan's suggestion, I signed up with news.individual.net a couple of
months ago, and the feed has been flawless. $10 Euros a year is almost
free. One minor downside: I did have to pay thru a European equivalent
of PayPal - required setting up an account, adding one more piece of
risk to my credit card - and the account will draw that $10 Euros out a
year unless I explicitly cancel the service.

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

 

Hi RS,

If you're a displaced Usenet user from Sympatico and are currently looking for
an alternative, we're providing a special offer that may be of interest.

NewsGuy.Com has been providing Usenet services since 1992, and if you purchase
any of our newsgroup accounts, we'll add 1-month of free service to that
account...

http://newsguy.com/sympatico.htm

Our members can connect to the newsgroups with their favorite NNTP newsreader
(Agent, Xnews, OE, etc.) or they can use our Web-News interface.

The Web interface includes Newsgroup Search, Thumbnail Viewer, BatchDownload
manager, and automatic binary decoding (rar, mpeg, avi, mp3, etc.)

We offer account types with different download capacities (3GB, 30GB, etc.), and
account fees that are as low as $3/month. We also offer a free 2-day trial that
allows visitors to check out the service without any cost or obligation.

If you have questions about any of the above, feel free to phone us toll-free
(1-866-4USENET) or email ().

Best regards,

NewsGuy.Com


--

 

They did have a North American affiliate:

http://www.clickandbuy.com/US/en/

I know what you mean about that, as I was worried as well. But I
watched my credit card bills, and I have NOT had any problems with the
initial subscription, or with the automatic renewal.

 

I wasn't going to mention it, but since you did, I will say that I
recently had to cancel the one credit card that I used for that because
someone (not me or family memebers) subsequently used it to make an
over-$400 purchase. I hesitated to mention it because I use that card
for many things, and didn't want to cast aspersions on them unfairly.
It is being investigated.

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

 

Go to Google Groups and you have free access...
I see this group here-
http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.autos.makers.chrysler?hl=en

A posting I made several minutes ago was there.

 

Go to Google Groups and you have free access...
I see this group here-
http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.autos.makers.chrysler?hl=en

A posting I made several minutes ago was there.[/QUOTE]

I find web-based news reading and posting way too time-consuming and
clunky. E-mail reader is a lot faster for everyday reading and posting.
Google is good for searching the archives though.

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

 

Additionally, Google only updates about once every 24 hours. The old
Deja-News was real-time.

If you want real-time access and fast answers, then going to a proper
news-reader with a proper news service is the only way now.

Google is awesome for historical searches, but is far from real-time.

I find web-based news reading and posting way too time-consuming and
clunky. E-mail reader is a lot faster for everyday reading and posting.
Google is good for searching the archives though.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')[/QUOTE]

 

As I said, I did a posting from my MT-Newswatcher and google had it in
minutes.

I do use a NewsWatcher program as my Telus provides very good News Group
support, but if your ISP doesn't provide News support Google is a good
alternating.

You're out of date, see above.

 

Google also updates in real-time, within minutes to even less than a
minute. But during peak times or heavy usage, the updates can take
hours. In the worst of cases, it's usually a few hours for me. It's
extremely rare that it's more than that.

If your access to Google shows updates every 24 hours, that might be a
function of your ISP and not Google, per se. Can I ask what is your ISP
and whether you are on a dialup or what?

If you are on a fast access method, like aDSL or cable, it could be
that you only post during peak times and then it seems as though it is
taking 24 hours? You post, it takes about 6 or 7 hours, go to sleep,
don't check until the following evening sort of thing? This is just a
guess on my part. I have posted and gotten return posts in minutes
during non-peak times so Google can be awfully fast at times.

 

I'm on Cable High-Speed.

Posting via news.individual.net and reading posts, is instantaneous.
Absolutely ZERO lag either way.

I will admit, it has been a couple of years since I tried posting with
Google. Mostly that was because of the absolutely AWEFUL and CRYPTIC
interface that they shoved down our throats after ditching the
Deja-News interface.

I would indeed hope that they DID improve on that piece of crap.
Perhaps they have. But the service is soooo good with
news.individual.net, that it will likely be a LONG time before I ever
consider trying Google for postings again. They took something good -
DejaNews - and ruined it. So users like me had to find another way.
When that other way is rock solid, lightnig fast, and inexpensive,
then Google has lost a customer.

As I said, I hope they have improved posting and refresh times. This
would be better for everyone. But I usually use Google as a research
tool / search engine. In that mode, real-time access is not critical.

 

For anyone who wants a freebie interface your welcome to go to
either of these:

http://news.ipinc.net//NewsPortal/ (reading only)

http://news.ipinc.net (permits posting and reading)

If it ever becomes a problem I'll pull them down, of course. But my
experience is that they generally aren't. And unlike Google they aren't
stuffed full of banner adverts.

Ted