Elm is a nice little program that allows you to compose mail, check mail, delete mail, and deep fry mail. Ok, maybe not the frying part, but you get the point. The easiest way to get accustomed to the program is to follow the menu prompts at the bottom and compose a message to yourself. Try sending this message, receiving it, reading it, and deleting it. Now, type in Tin and press enter.
Tin is a more cryptic newsgroup reader program.
In other words, a newsgroup is like a public corkboard of email messages. Unfortunately, I'm not going to detail proper use of Tin as a newsgroup reader, as I get very angry and frustrated with its ineptness. What I CAN tell you is to either follow the menu prompts to subscribe to groups and read the messages, or wait until we setup your browsers to read newsgroups. Now, on to the Internet.