Quiet isn't it?

Serendipitiously, my isp has just started to carry the newsgroup, so I haven't had to continue using news.individual.de, mind you, I think their charge is very reasonable.

Tom

Charles,

I thought it was my news-server ! I've reverted to BT as the message about Berlin and charging went to my (naughtily according to their rules) spam protected email address.

Any other decent free news feeds out there ?

AWEM

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 07:59:18 +0000 (UTC), "Andrew Mawson"

Me too - swapped back to BT and had forgotten how useless and slow it is.

Charles

When Uni Berlin announced they were going subscription based, I went straight back to Force9/PlusNet servers that are provided with the ADSL account. For about an hour...

I guess it's one of those things where you don't realise just how good it is until you have to use something else.

Never had to use it, Easynet were pretty good and BT Broadband seems to be almost as good, especially recently.

Been at work 7 days running so haven't had much time for chat, although the ebay purchases seem to be holding up OK :-))

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

Come on guys, I'm not known for throwing money around but even I didn't think that £7.23 was a huge sum to pay. Not enough to send me scouring the internet for a free service anyway.

Regards

Kevin

I'm on BT broadband, but I've never been able to use thier newsgroup server. I tried to ask the "help" line how to set it up and they didn't even know they had one, in fact they had never heard of newsgroups.

Regards

Kevin

Kevin That'll be the cunningly mis-named "help" service from BT Broadband who are the worst customer service outfit ever!

The BT server for news is: news.btopenworld.com the rest should be simple.

However to illustrate how crap they are I'm replying to this via a web interface at Mailgate 'cos BT hasn't posted the messages from you and Peter yet!

Yup - I'll pay the Berlin people on Monday - is there a payment page written in English or shoud I just use babelfish to understand what I'm doing?

Regards

Charles

message

Kevin,

I agree - I doubt that £7.23 would break the bank for many on this list, but how long do you think it will say at that price? (or am I being too cynical?)

AWEM

seems

Kevin,

It's just news.btinternet.com

AWEM

The system at work is through Waitrose.com who also seem to be pretty much up to speed, all the messages look to have come through this morning, haven't tried BT as that's at home, but it was OK this morning first thing.

There is more than one BT newsfeed IIRC....

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

Yes, it was all in English. The only thing I had to do was to sign up to the payment plan that they accept, as they don't take Paypal. They use "click & buy", which is run in the UK by BT (slightly ironic that). It must have worked as I'm still here

Regards

Kevin

Just to join in, I use giganews.com, they seem to be reasonably priced, have a fairly complete selection of groups, high speed, excellent retention times (over a year) and are extremely reliable.

I went over to them when I was an NTL customer and got royally pissed off with both their news servers and their service.

Usual disclaimers Mark Rand RTFM

I have to say that I strongly object to paying for an ISP service and then having to go elsewhere for the newsfeed. It is about time that ISP's got their act together on Usenet access and made it work properly for people who pay.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

I don't know much about these things but I signed up to freeuk some time ago and everything works ok. Maybe broadband is different but we can't get it anyway. I don't seem to have paid anything to anyone but am not going to complain. Previously I used another server who charged something like

190GBPounds per year... for what?..I don't know because I never had any reason to contact them. Another thing I have noticed is that this small group of contributors are for the most part people, like myself, who do little model engineering but make things for other people and oneself.

Donald, Isle of South Uist

We have always had a modelling interest, and have a part-built Britannia 5" gauge in the workshop, although progress tends to be in proportion to the amount of other work/jobs to be done here.

This is more a gathering of friends who discuss anything related really, the common thread if you like being the machine tool discussions and fixes for problems.

As far as paying for email goes, we have two paid for accounts with easynet, plus three or so others (including Gmail which I am starting to get to like) one of which came with the broadband service for this location, but we don't use it.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

I suspect that Usenet is regarded as dead technology by many ISP's, and that they asume we will all eventually migrate to one of the web based syatems like yahoo (in fact I subscribe to several Yahoo groups but only this one on Usenet). That, as they say, is progress (of a sort).

Regards

Kevin

I tried the Yahoo system, but didn't like it at all.

There are only so many places and sources of info that I have time to access, so try and keep them all in one place if possible.

Still at work....

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

I get this UKRME group fine through news.freeserve.net in addition to some binary feeds. I spotted the following on another group which may help others:

The server I've been using for years is open for new accounts - all free - much better than NIN or any of the ISP news servers. Go to

You will get bounced by the logon script if you use only one name. So use Joe Soap instaed of only Joe.

Once successful, the next step is to receive an email which you must confirm by clicking a link.

The link takes you to the signon screen where you must key in your user id and password.

In the end you know you have succeeeded by seeing a screen which says Hello [username] ! You are currently logged in to your account on the website. etc.

Not tried this myself but hope its of use to someone Regards Bill