I know that concerning access to this NG I'm cheap. and I know some of
the pitfals by using Google acces. I noticed on the left side column,
you can make a listing of the posters in a thread,a nd you can make
the column read in a tree of "Sort by date" or "sort by reply"

I prefer the sort by date, but lately Google has that all messed up.
Sometimes I can click on a thread and it will start off with post # 5
and you may be able to proceed OR it may stop right there, regardless
of how much clicking around you do.

Some posts never show up. hmmmm, maybe for the better.

Oh well.

So 'tis true , for the most part, that you "get what you pay for,
and ... you pay for what you get"

It's still free, though.... ?: