Newsgroups

If you're not familiar with newsgroups, also known as Usenet, it's a part of the Internet that's still based on text, much like email, and you really should check it out. The newsgroups are somewhat like a giant bulletin board system in that they are interactive, but not in real time. Despite that, the newsgroups are a great, largely untapped online resource.

www.google.com groups

The way that newsgroups work is that you find a group that shares the same interest as youcomp.graphics.apps.paint-shop-pro, for exampleand you read some of the posts there. Before you ask questions, which you can do by posting a message to the group (almost like sending an email), make sure you spend some time reading through the group. Doing so will do two things: First, it will teach you about the etiquette of the group (how things are done and, more importantly, what's not done). Second, it might help you find that someone has already asked the same question recently and that it has been answered. (One of those things that's frowned upon is asking a question that was asked recently. It shows that you didn't take the time to read the group's subjects, and people are reluctant to help those who don't help themselves on the newsgroups.) Another reason to spend some time reading through the messages, or at least reading though the subjects, is that you might find a FAQ (frequently asked questions) and that document will be very useful should you decide to spend some time in the newsgroup.

So, how do you access the newsgroups, anyway? It used to be that you'd have to have a newsreader and access to the Internet, of course, along with access to a news server (a computer hooked to the Net 24/7 that holds the tens of thousands of messages in the various newsgroups). In other words, it wasn't something the average computer user would attempt. Now, though, you can access newsgroups through Google. Simply visit www.google.com and click the Groups link at the top of the Google window.

From there, you can explore a little or simply head over to the Paint Shop Pro newsgroups. The most popular of them is the one mentioned previously. Check it out to see what you have been missing.