I've always used Outlook Express to handle newsgroups and like most other MVPs have moaned heavily when Microsoft have started trying to move SharePoint questions over to forums mainly because there is No "I've read that already" possibility when accessing a forum via a browser.

But "I've read that already" in Outlook Express (and now in the Vista OS that's called something else - which naturally as I'm now on the Mac I can't remember - Microsoft Reader maybe) only works when you are only using one single machine. Move to another machine and all the stuff you've read in the other one's copy of Outlook Express isn't marked as read in the second machine.

This isn't so much of a problem among my three machines at home, as when I switch machines I just make sure machine A is up-to-date; then switch; load all messages in each newsgroup; and then mark all as read. But it is a problem when I switch from my work portable (which I leave at work - it's quite a pain to work with as it is naturally one or two generations behind my home machines) to a home machine as there could be (depending on what I get up to between work and home) anything between 15 minutes and 3 hours or so between leaving work and arriving home.

The usual is probably more like 30 mins (drive home via the food shop(s)) and then I just assume that nothing important has come in in the meantime and check the very latest new threads only and then mark all as read. So if I ignore your reply to an earlier thread now and again, that could be it.

If it's more like 3 hours then I've been canoeing on the way home and then I try to read those otherwise lost messages but as that means re-reading a lot of messages I read at work I do it for a restricted group of newsgroups (the same restricted group I look at at work unless it's a very slow day).

Now Outlook Express I've always used so that it shows thread and messages within threads, but Outlook Express naturally isn't available on the Mac so there I use Thunderbird. I'd tried Thunderbird on the PC too but found it took forever to set up roughly to be like Outlook Express.

On the Mac though I didn't bother - although I did change the (stupid) defaults so that my replies were *above* what I was quoting - and so I started using it in a different way to the way I use Outlook Express.

I now use it so that it just shows the messages (if I really need to I can do a few clicks and see the thread) and I've found this to be a much faster method of checking all messages quickly. These days there's so much in the SP products and equally so much covered by each newsgroup that I only have a clue on a fraction of the messages anyway and in any case there are these days so many messages that answering them could easily turn out to be a full-time occupation if you are not careful. Certainly I tend to notice that these days there is no problem in waiting for the Public Library to open on a Saturday morning as I'm still clicking away mostly by 10.

This use of Thunderbird brings with it its own problems. Apart from the fact that an extra machine at home means that an extra manual "snyc" is needed, there's also the stupid difference that Thunderbird uses "Reply" to reply to the newsgroup whereas OE uses Reply Group to reply to the newsgroup (Reply means an e-mail to the person who wrote the message you are replying to); and there's also the need for people to quote messages when you are not reading them in a thread.

At the moment I'm not even sure if Thunderbird(Mac) and OE treat quotes in the same way. Certainly normal text quotes are repeated fine in both, but there has been more than one case recently when people replying via a certain web site(s) interface think they are quoting yet Thunderbird (and maybe OE?) doesn't show the quote at all.

But that's something to look closer at. First I have to have a look at a non-quote (Thunderbird) message in Outlook Express *and* in that Vista "equivalent".

Almost forgot. The web-based forums.

I have RSS feeds for them (so I can mark messages as read !) and then click and thus go to the forum itself only if I think I might be able to reply to the message.

The problem here is that I (using Newsgator's browser edition) can see the RSS feeds in both the PC and in the Mac; and can in both click to access the forum itself, but when it comes to replying, the PC lets me reply and the Mac's browser (Safari) doesn't! So mostly when using the Mac I don't bother with the forums at all. So if anyone is wondering why they haven't seen me there recently, that's why.