On Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:22:16 +0100, Stephen Wolstenholme
wrote:

As you are using Agent you could almost guarantee never missing any
posts by adding more news servers to the list rather than depending on
just one or two.

Steve

I used to do that but unless there's something in Agent that I've
never found (being technical but lazy), the problem is that the groups
from the different servers are all listed separately and I get totally
confused, especially with the Microsoft Newsgroups. Having tried
Giganews (and others) in the past, I've found that Easynews has the
closest to 100% delilvery rate. The "individual" postings are missing
from Giga, not Easy. The only issue I've found (recently) is that a
fair number of postings via GardenBanter don't come thru to Easynews
but most of the missing ones don't appear in Google Groups either.

I suppose the sad thing, in a way, is that more and more people will
get to Usenet through the likes of Garden Banter and Google Groups and
the purist "newsreaders" will gradually die out, like a lot of the RSS
readers of old - Windows Mail/Outlook now does it all. Trouble then is
that, gradually, providers will drop Usenet services and organisations
that deliver Usenet services to their networks will withdraw them
because of the more "populist" (I know that's the wrong word but
can't think of the right one - hope you get my drift) stuff that's now
appearing. Ban Facebook etc today, Usenet tomorrow sort of thing.

I suppose that's progress.

Cheers

Jake