In message
Peter Clinch wrote:

Rob wrote:

Some people still like and enjoy steam engines - most of us drive somethinga
little more modern.

Where in this particular case the "more modern" is more awkward to use,
slower and generally more crap. Sort of a Thamslink Trains vs. the
Brighton Belle... "more modern" and "more fashionable" is not
necessarily better.

The easiest way to demonstrate the superiority of usenet over any web
forum I've yet seen is look at uk.rec.cycling through a news feed and
through the web interface cyclingforums have put onto the newsfeed to
present the same posts.

The big difference for me is that when I've read a news post I click the
right arrow key and the next post appears immediately. When I do whatever
the equivalent on a forum is I have to wait while the page is fetched. It
might be a small delay, as I'm on 2M broadband, but multiply it by a
hundred or so - each day - and you see why I don't bother with the forum
format.

Incidentally I think that the biggest problem is that with any really
informative message, by the time you've read it, the next button has
scrolled off the top of the screen, so instead of one key to move on you
have to scroll up or down (and remember which one it is on this particular
forum), find the button click - wait - wait - and then find that it's
something you are not interested in, and repeat the process for the next.

Oh, and did I mention font sizes and colours that don't produce easily read
text - in a newsreader I control the font, and colour scheme, to one that I
want to read. Until CSS2 becomes universal and browsers really allow you to
override elements of the CSS, instead of the current only option of
disabling it completely, I prefer to be in control.

Sorry, a decent newsreader makes handling this sort of thing fast, easy and
comfortable.

Maybe the problem is that people don't have newsreaders.

Alan

--
Alan Adams

http://www.nckc.org.uk/