Since the usenet implosion from most of the big ISP's (I was with Verizon),
I've tried a bunch of free and pay alternative providers. The one I've
ended up with is usenetmonster.com. This costs $2.95 per month for 5 gigs
of downloads (which I'll never use), and unused capacity is rolled over into
the next month. It was a snap to set up, took less than two minutes and
worked immediately. Download speeds have been generally quite fast, although
a few times they've been slow. The one glitch is that this provider had a
policy when I signed up (not explained on their website) that new users had
to first download 2 gigs to be given access to post ("to discourage
spammers"), or alternatively request from support to be immediately given
this access. I wrote them about this, and they wrote me back that they have
now changed this so that their website allows any new registree to select
enable posting access immediately.
$35 per year seems to me to be a small price to pay for the excellent
advice and terrific photos that I learn from on this and other groups. While
it's not free, very little else is these days, and there's lots of things I
spend money on that cost more that I'd rather give up instead.
Chuck B.