Mark NewsGroups

The first and easiest method of marking messages for download is the Mark Newsgroup command in the Offline menu.

• The first decision to make is if you want to get new messages for all your subscribed newsgroups, or just some of them, as by putting a check mark in the box next to each newsgroup name. If your list of subscribed newsgroups is quite small, that's probably the easiest method.

• The second decision you must make is whether or not you want to download just the headers of the message or the entire message. Downloading just the headers takes much less time, but forces you to go through another selection step to download the messages later on.Downloading entire messages increases the overall download time significantly and uses more disk space but is more efficient use of your time. You might even use the two options differently for different newsgroups. For instance, if you read a newsgroup like rec.humor.funny that doesn't get many messages a day, and those that it does get are generally interesting, it makes sense to download complete messages. However, if you subscribe to a newsgroup that gets hundreds of messages each day, most of which are uninteresting, downloading just headers and taking the extra step later make more sense.

• Finally, if you want to limit the number of messages you download, you can set Internet News to download only messages that have been posted within the past few days. Again, this setting may be most useful with newsgroups that carry lots of messages and where discussions move quickly.

After you've finished marking your selections, click the Download Now button to retrieve your messages. If you want, you can click the Disconnect when download is finished button shown here if you want to hang up your modem automatically after retrieving all the messages.