bandwidth

Thunderbird is a mail program, and not really a news reader. Using a real news reader isn't an "add-on". It's a replacement.

Killfiles can be fast and painless.

My version of Thunderbird has 'message filters' under 'tools' and 'create filter from message' under 'message' at the top of the page.

I like the newsreader in Netscape 4.78. I've used it since it first came out.

I used that one for years. Still do on my '98 laptop.

But 7.2 is worth the effort for an upgrade.

Richard

I have my archive of old posts and couldn't get them to work properly with 7.2. I have moved the original instal from computer to computer, along with the archives by installing the 4.78, then overwriting the folder with the data from the older computer. I's made it through at least six computers that way, starting with my first win 95 computer. (150 MHz, 16 MB P1)

I am usine Netscape 7.2 and don't have many problems The "T" key gets rid of any thread I don't want and highlights the next one not read. ...lew...only reading this because I'm bored with school closed

I tried 7.2, and switched back after a few hours. I have 'control K' on 4.78 to kill threads.

Nope. Blocking a sender in OE is a 10 second job. Both TMT and Cliff have had a secure place on by blocked list for years now. Just take a moment to learn how to use what you've got. Reading rcm is normally an enjoyable experience for me because there is simply no need to suffer trolls.

Vaughn

Mine does too, and I use it for email, but it does not work on newsgroups

That must be why I stopped using it. Using a newsreader without filters is like a car with no wheels. You might get there, but you won't enjoy the ride.

I never could figure out what all the complaining was about, Is OE not "cool" enough? It seems to do a great job for me.

Too many security problems. Before some of the major patches it would open and run a trojan program without you even opening the message. add .jpg or any other image extension to an executable, and it would run it without asking permission. Remember the SVEN virus? OE helped to spread it and infect millions of computers.

It's an After-the-fact knock off of Netscape (Mozilla).

Richard

Speaking for myself, the problem here are the off-topic posters and no amount of "better" newsreaders is going to fix that. The problem is rampant across all the "serious" newsgroups I read.

In all seriousness, there are tools dedicated to newsreading which have better workflow for reading, filtering, killfiling, and so on. OE works, sure, but it's kind of like driving on all-season tires. Average in any conditions. If you buy snow tires for winter, and performance tires for summer, you get a better product all the time compared to a generic "do everything and nothing well" product.

It's significantly better as a newsreader than google news's web interface, though.

Actually, you might find that many of these off-topic posters are posting to multiple newsgroups. A decent newsreader will let you killfile by regular expression, so you can block, say, Newsgroups: *,*,* ...which will block anything crossposted to 3 or more groups (like Cliff's Crap). Amazing how much of the crap that takes out. And as DoN stated, (paraphrasing), blocking entire continents by IP range, is quite effective as well.

Well ... my killfile (in a better newsreader) kills of about 66% of the typical day's traffic. Some of that is spam killed based on IP address range (such as the frequent footwear spams from China) , some spam killed based on wildcard matching in the "Subject: " header.

However -- some is permanent killfiling of a few individuals, and adding OT (typically political) "Subject: " lines to the killfile for 30 days (after which they are automatically removed -- and the discussion has usually died by then as well. This keeps what is left a lot more fun to read.

So -- yes, a better newsreader can make things a lot better. FWIW, the one which I currently use is "slrn", which I believe has been ported to Windows as well as being available on must flavors of unix (including Macs running OS-X, which really have a unix hiding under the GUI.)

Enjoy, DoN.

If it's a RE, You probably mean

Newsgroups: .*,.*,

Hm. My regexp will block any post sent to 3 or more groups, yours I believe wouldn't hit unless a newsgroup's name starts with a . Perhaps different apps expand it differently, though.