Newsgroups can be the holy grail for finding information - it can also be frustrating. It's easy to read and contribute to newsgroups. If you use Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator to browse the Web you already have the necessary program, called a newsreader, installed on your computer. You can even download freeware and shareware newsreaders from the 'Net if you want. After setting up your newsreader, log onto your service provider's news server.
Most people use a dial up account with their provider to access the Internet.
Just connect as you normally would, then launch your newsreader program to connect to your provider's news server. When your newsreader connects to the news server for the first time it will retrieve a list of newsgroups your provider has at hand. This may take a few minutes depending on how many newsgroups your provider receives. Normally, you can expect around 28,000 or so newsgroups on a typical server. These can be further divided into sub-topics that narrow down the newsgroup subject.