To access the news, users will need special software that will communicate with a NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol) server. In UNIX, there are tin, rn, nn and xvnews news reader available. There are also news reader programs for Machintosh machines and PCs machines. Some of the news reader programs for PCs machines are ports from the UNIX's news reader.
The USENET News has the advantage of containing information about general problems that people face around the world regarding common topics of interest. It is also possible to post your problems or questions on the news so that users who are familiar with your problems will be able to give you advice. Likewise, one could participate in writing to other users about your experience on certain issues. The disadvantage of researching through the news is that the traffic on the USENET is very heavy. In some of the hot topics, one can find 800 new postings a day. It is very time consuming to look through them.
News groups allow users to do research topics that interest them. For example, I know nothing about visual programming and am interested in finding out more about it. First, I looked through the list of news groups that has the key word visual. I found four news groups that contain the word visual, comp.lang.visual, comp.lang.basic.visual, comp.lang.basic.database and comp.lang.basic.misc. This is shown on the lower right hand window. I chose to read the latter one since there were two messages in the first one. The news listings were then displayed on the left hand window. By browsing through the subject lines of the news, I could get a general idea of what kind of problems and issues that Visual Basic's users had and what programs could enhance Visual Basic. The top right window shows a piece of news from the listing.
