Julia,

Firstly, welcome to GardenBanter.

One of the advantages of using the web interface is that your email address is never shown unless you choose to post it in your message.

If you are using Outlook Express to read the newsgroup, you must put an email address in the settings - but I recommend it is a false one!

Often people put their address in a disguised format such as where anyone manually entering the address will know to remove the NOSPAM from the address.

This is not successful with the modern email harvesters, which will remove blocks of capitals from an email address. The best 'disguise' is to write out the address in full e.g. me at here dot com, which gives the harvesters no chance.

As to which is better, it very much depends on your habits. If you read a lot of diverse newsgroups then a newsreader like Outlook Express is a must (there are better free newsreaders out there e.g. Xnews). If you are only interested in a specific newsgroup - say gardening, then this forum is very useful. (I am biased as I am the administrator of this site!)

I hope this helps.