Although all the news clients listed work slightly differently, they all need certain key items of information to work properly. You'll need the account details that you received after you completed the sign-up procedure ‚ your username and password, and you'll also need the following: News server: news.eidosnet.co.uk Useful newsgoups: eidosnet.talk, eidosnet.announce Offline or Online? There are two ways you can deal with the newsgroups, depending on the time and resources you have available: Online: You can connect to the news server, collect the postings from your subscribed newsgroups (using your news reader) and then read and respond to them. All while you are connected to the Internet. Offline: If you do not want to stay connected whilst reading the postings, there is an alternative. Once you have collected all the postings from your subscribed Newsgroups, you can disconnect from the Internet entirely and then read through the postings at you leisure. If you want to respond to any of the postings, you can prepare your replies offline and then connect to the Internet and post them all at once. Newsgroups can be accessed from a browser, using Dejanews, or by using a News program, available on all types of computer. Either way the principles are the same. The main difference is that a News program will allow the messages to be kept on your machine, so that they can be read at a later time, without being connected to the Internet. Dejanews is accessed through a browser and does not need any additional software, but you will really need to be connected the whole time that you are using the News facility.