According to its documentation, AltaVista's Usenet database covers only the past two weeks and is updated continuously. However, a search in the database shows that it covers several months. Due to the continuous updating, it may have more current postings than DejaNews. However, not all the articles in the database are always directly available. All of AltaVista's regular search tools are also available for its Usenet database.
Field searching is available in both using the field name followed by a colon and the search term.
The AltaVista display gives two options for retrieving an article. Click on the title to retrieve the article direct from AltaVista or click on the L to retrieve it from your local news server. Unfortunately, sometimes only recent articles are available directly from AltaVista, and local news servers rarely have more than the past few week's worth. Thus, sometimes it is possible to find numerous hits on AltaVista that are not available for viewing. To view these older articles, the best bet is to try to find them on DejaNews.