The Usenet - Something for Everyone.

	The Usenet is the message-base of the Internet.  Every day,
tens of megabytes of messages from millions of people are posted to
almost ten thousand newsgroups.  In scale, it's far bigger than any
BBS message base, or even BBS network message bases, like Fidonet.
The Usenet can be overwhelming.  Here at Exec-PC, we get over 5000
groups (many zero-volume junk groups, and many local-heirachy groups
are not included).  

	Now, we don't expect you to have to wade through all this to
get to what you want to read.  You should start by picking option "S"
off of our menu.  This runs the cn (choosenews) program, which lets
you enter keywords for what groups you want to read.  Lets say you
were interested in coffee.  You would tell choosenews to look up
coffee, and it would prompt you on whether you wanted to subscribe to
"alt.coffee" or "rec.food.drink.coffee", and some other coffee-related
newsgroups.  We strongly recommend the group "news.announce.newusers",
as it is chock-full of informative posts which demystify the sometimes
mind-boggling Usenet.

	To help you understand newsgroup names, here are some of the
major categories, based on what the name starts with:
	news	administrative groups
	comp	computer-related groups
	rec	recreational groups
	sci	scientific groups
	alt 	alternative (fringe) groups
The "alt" groups tend to be unusual, which some people may find either
fascinating or unpalatable.  Be warned, some sections of the Usenet
can be quite unfriendly to people who post questions which have been
asked a thousand times before.  Most newsgroups have a "FAQ", a list
of Frequently Asked Questions, which you should search for and browse
before posting.  "Netiquitte" is quite a big deal on the Usenet.

	Once you have picked out a few newsgroups, you're ready to
start reading.  We have two newsreaders.  Tin and Trn.  Tin is
definately the friendlier of the two, and we're sure you'll find the
on-screen help nice.  You can subscribe and unsubscribe in tin, if you
know the newsgroup names.  Trn is often preferred by "old hats", it's
the successor to the popular rn newsreader, and help is always
available by pressing "h".  Trn can be faster than tin, but pays a
price in ease of use.
