Just a thought...

[jadney@vwtype3.org (Melissa & Jim)]

>From: Greg Merritt <gregm@engin.umich.edu>

>At 11:31 PM -0000 4/16/97, Melissa & Jim wrote:
>>I use and prefer Free Agent because it allows me to download and read
>>newsgroups offline (after hanging up the phone/modem.)  This helps to keep
>>the peace at our house.
>
>Jim--
>
>	isn't this how you read your email, too?  Check out Eudora Light;
>it's a free version of Eudora Pro that lets you dload from your mail
>server, hang up the phone, automatically segregate incoming messages to
>different folders, compose replies, then dial up again to upload.
>
>	Whoa!  I see from closer examination of your header that you're
>using Eudora 1.4 already.  If you upgrade to 3.X I'm sure you'll find it
>*well* worth the effort...!  The filtering functions are simple and *very*
>powerful.  All of my T3 messages end up in their own folder, etc.  You can
>get it from www.eudora.com.

Greg,

I made this message public because I thought there might be several people 
out there who might use a bit of explaination about Free Agent and 
Newsgroups.  Thanks for the hint on upgrading to a newer version of Eudora.  
Actually I have been trying to get Pegasus to work, but no luck so far.

Here's what I do every day.

Dial up and collect all my email with Eudora, download all the new subject 
lines of all the new posts in the newsgroups I read, and upload any 
responses I have to yesterday's Newsgroup posts.  This takes about 3 
minutes, then I hang up.

Offline I read and respond to my mail and look through the new Newsgroup 
messages.  While still offline I can mark each of the Newsgroup postings 
that look like they might interest me.  Note that with this system, I am 
free to ignore the various forms of spam and other pointless posts.

I dial back in and send my outgoing mail, pick up any new mail that might 
have just arrrived, and then tell Free Agent to grab all the posts that I 
marked.  This may take 3-4 minutes, then I disconnect from my ISP (Internet 
Service Provider.)  Now I can read any new mail and all this days posts and 
write any replys that I choose to.  These will get uploaded tomorrow.

For the unfamiliar, Newsgroups are divided up by topic.  There are literally 
tens of thousands of them, but I doubt if any ISP carries all of them.  They 
function much like a bulletin board:  Someone posts a message there and 
other people respond to it.  You can watch as, day after day, messages pile 
up on a particular topic.  A string of messages on a single topic is called 
a thread.  You can just read along and read a thread as it evolves, or read 
and contribute.  The choice is yours.  You will run into people selling 
anything imaginable; free speech run amok, if you will, but with a good News 
reading program, no one can force you to bother with a post that you don't 
want to read.

I like Free Agent because it allows me to download the messages of my choice 
and read (and respond to) them later at my leisure.  If on line time is not 
a factor for you then WinVN is a very good choice.  There are probably many 
others, but these two are free.  BTW, Free Agent can also be configured to 
work on line, but I don't know why anyone would want to do that.  YMMV

Thanks for the read.

Jim
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       Melissa Kepner                                    Jim Adney
       jadney@vwtype3.org              jadney@vwtype3.org
                             Laura Kepner-Adney
                             Madison, Wisconsin
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