A good configuration for Windows Mail and Technet Newsgroups

[Guest]

I like how Windows Mail will tell me what posts I have looked at, but it
doesn't seem to keep all the messages. I only have a few months worth. Is
there a way to configure this? I have told it to "Download all messages".

Also it doesn't have the featuer of requesting notification when somone
replies to my post. Can it set that?

Without some of these things why is a is news reader used at all?
Thanks

 

[Julian]

I like how Windows Mail will tell me what posts I have looked at, but it
doesn't seem to keep all the messages. I only have a few months worth.
Is
there a way to configure this? I have told it to "Download all messages".

The news servers themselves only keep a limited periods
posts. If you want to see all posts' to a group you need
to check archives. Google bought Dejanews which archived
most newsgroups and they still maintain them.

Here, for instance, is this groups archive...
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft.public.windows.vista.mail/topics?hl=en

Also it doesn't have the featuer of requesting notification when somone
replies to my post. Can it set that?

I don't think so* but you can mark messages as watched which
almost serves the purpose. In Google groups click on the star
and then you can set Google to only display starred topics.

* this is to do with the way newsserver work. They propagate messages
to other servers but they dont send messages to subscribers but simply
wait until polled.

Without some of these things why is a is news reader used at all?

News clients are far more efficient tools for reading newsgroups
than the clunky web interfaces. Try keeping up to date with a busy
group using a web interface and you'll soon see what I mean.

Check here if you want to further investigate the mechanism
of newsgroups...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup