By Scott Dubler
Usenet is a system on the Internet that allows people to discuss thousands of topics in a regulated or unregulated environment. The topics are organized into news groups, that contain public messages sent and read like electronic mail. To access Usenet, one needs to use a news reader such as PINE. Anyone who has done this knows how slow and annoying PINE can be. Fortunately, a new program called News Xpress is now available. This news reader greatly simplifies the process of following news groups while offering many powerful features.
Microsoft Windows or Windows for Workgroups is necessary to run the program, as well as a winsock.dll other than Trumpet Winsock 1.0. Trumpet Winsock 2.0 or MS-TCPIP 32 will work well. The news reader's setup is very simple. Once a user has set the newserver (news.cc.columbia.edu) and has added their personal information, they can quickly access all of Usenet.
Some limitations of PINE are that it is slow, cryptic, and only allows one news group and one message to be open at any time. News Xpress eliminates these problems by taking advantage of a windowed environment. A user can open several groups and messages at the same time. Information from the messages can then be easily copied using Cut and Paste. News Xpress allows a user to sort messages by subject, date, or author which makes navigating certain groups much easier. Messages can be saved or printed. Another useful feature is that it has a UUdecoder incorporated into it. One just needs to highlight the messages, and News Xpress will automatically concatenate UUencoded files, decode them, and save them as binary files. News Xpress is a beta product, which means that the author does not yet consider it a finished product. Testing done by the Moment staff members has proved it to be reliable. The only times the program was unstable was when the program was opened and closed numerous times without restarting the computer. Eventually the program no longer accessed the news server. Although this can be a nuisance, it is a harmless problem, and has never caused a crash. News Xpress is freely distributed software.