"Drew" <Drew@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:509080BA-EA4B-4BEB-BD0D-5155112FB8FE@microsoft.com...
>I like how Windows Mail will tell me what posts I have looked at, but it
> doesn't seem to keep all the messages. I only have a few months worth.
> Is
> there a way to configure this? I have told it to "Download all messages".
The news servers themselves only keep a limited periods
posts. If you want to see all posts' to a group you need
to check archives. Google bought Dejanews which archived
most newsgroups and they still maintain them.
Here, for instance, is this groups archive...
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/mic...l/topics?hl=en
>
> Also it doesn't have the featuer of requesting notification when somone
> replies to my post. Can it set that?
I don't think so* but you can mark messages as watched which
almost serves the purpose. In Google groups click on the star
and then you can set Google to only display starred topics.
* this is to do with the way newsserver work. They propagate messages
to other servers but they dont send messages to subscribers but simply
wait until polled.
>
> Without some of these things why is a is news reader used at all?
News clients are far more efficient tools for reading newsgroups
than the clunky web interfaces. Try keeping up to date with a busy
group using a web interface and you'll soon see what I mean.
Check here if you want to further investigate the mechanism
of newsgroups...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup