Known as "Usenet" newsgroups are discussion groups that take placeover the internet. They exist on just about every subject under the sun, rely on people sending in contributions to the debate via email .

You'll need a dedicated program to read them, such as FreeAgent or the programs built into the web browsers.You also need to access a news server to be able to read newsgroups.Get the address of the news server from your service provider or make use of some public news servers.On the 'links' page, you can find a address or two of some public news servers. Your service provider also chooses which newsgroups to support - since many have adult content. Every newsgroup is prefixed so you have some idea of what the content is.There are a lot of these prefixes on Usenet.

Just some of the prefixes and their content:
• alt. - alternative, the most varied
• biz. - business
• comp. - computers
• misc. - miscellaneous
• news. - news about Usenet
• rec. - recreational,sports,gambling,food
• sci. - science
• soc. - social(society) issues

Whether you use your web browser to access newsgroups or a special program such as FreeAgent the steps are very similar.Ask your service provider for help with the configuration of your news.
When you run a newsgroup program, you'll be asked to
supply - News(NNTP)Server - which is the news server address, your email address, mail server ,full name and how you would want it to connect(via phone line).
Most programs will also ask you if you want to download all the newsgroups held on the server - yes - but be prepared to wait.This is then all the newsgroups your service provider supports.Simply scroll down the list and click on the one that you'd like to view.As with email, you can read messages offline.