Anyone here use any newsgroups......

are they easy to use.......do I need a good night sleep to do this?

Can I be stoned...or do I have to be sober.

Sober works better, atleast just get set up then cheers...
I am an avid newsgroup junky... Luckily my ISP doesnt limit the quantity I can download with. I pull about 8-12gigs a week.

Software you are going to need:
Grabit (Freeware) - www.shemes.com
Par2 Software - www.quickpar.org.uk
Winrar - its everywhere.

PM me if you need help setting it up. Easy install and get going... whats tough is figuring out what you see on the screen and choosing what to grab.

I use Grabit and love it. The one thing that pisses me off about newsgroups are the a-holes that don't put the RAID (.par) files up to.

There is always a couple of parts of the file that are no longer on the server and it sucks when you just need a 10 meg file to play the new game.

Thats why I use Bittorrent now. I never have to worrie about that ever again.

P.S. Who is your ISP?

Rogers

I prefer "Agent" for my newsgroup activities. Also, don't get tricked into paying for a news server, odds are your ISP has a free one for its subscribers.

Hey beat_box, I have Rogers, and they have just recently cut down their newsgroup server speed SIGNIFICANTLY

Let's just say I used to be able to download around 600Kb/s, now I usually hover around 50Kb/s. I called them to see wtf is up, and they told me they cut it down, but upped the retension to about 30 days. (Retension is the amount of time the posts stay on the server, they changed it from about 2 to 30).

Any questions PM me.

I use my ISPs news server... provided by Cox Communications.
I don't know what the retention is for them but I have an unlimited download.

As Ron Popiel says "Just set it and Forget it"
Set it at night and let it ride til morning.
I agree about not providing pars, another thing that drives me nuts is either not providing details in the message header or atleast creating an NFO. No instead they have a 120 character header filled with useless BS wanting me to go to an IRC channel that is usuallly full to find out its a cheesy file anyways.

i agree with chillindude.
use newsleecher and sign up with newzbin.com. it makes useing newsgroups stupid easy.it basically is a usenet indexing site. you grab there .nzb file and bam download it with your newsreader(if it's supoorted) you could also use newsbin pro, but imo it's a resource hog.
if you get a sorry dl limit from your isp provivded newsgroup access, like i do, you should think about paying. to me its worth it if you are gonna be downloading binaries alot. i'd suggest usenetserver. great speed, good retention.unlimited downloads. hovers around my cable internet cap consistantly. 15 bucks a month though. other ones people use are astraweb and newshosting is coming up recently.i've had bad experiences with astraweb though... awful customer service
also read slyck's guise to newsgroups, it's a little dated but helpful. http://www.slyck.com/ng.php

Hey hey hey now, who said anything about binaries?

i am new to the news group scene but the only good news group that i know is newzbin.com is there another good place like that for console expescially xbox games ?????

ALSO I MIGHT BE NEEDING A NEW NEWSGROUP SERVER...

i had a isp that had free newsgro0ups but i left and got cable modem because it was cheaper at this point and the other isp i had to login to their newsgroup...... so i just tried a couple of friends username and password in my newsgroup user software and it wont let me log in..... i didnt change anything with the software but it wont let me in the server....... what the hell is going on

just to let y'all know, Rogers just switched over to Giganews (ok, a couple of weeks ago;) ) and their limit is like 3 gb... Not sure on all the details but you better move to western canada and get shaw... Their newsgroup access is one of the best! I just got 4.3 Mbps so not to shabby!