Microsoft offers more than 1,900 public and 500 private newsgroups that cover all aspects of Microsoft products and technologies. An individual newsgroup might get up to 15,000 postings per month, with developers answering customer questions, asking about specific product features, and getting product feedback. The newsgroups have unlimited reach; public newsgroups are fed to Usenet (the collection of all posts publicly distributed through the NNTP protocol) and live on servers outside of Microsoft. Private newsgroups for MSDN members are available by connecting directly to Microsoft newsgroup servers. These require an account and password for each set of newsgroups. MSDN newsgroups are a part of the Usenet hierarchy and are available locally to customers via ISPs around the world, as well as through an online reader at MSDN Online.

The newsgroup community is made up of expert Microsoft developers, Microsoft support professionals, MSDN subscribers, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), IT professionals, and other developers exchanging ideas and providing programming solutions.

The MSDN Managed Community Newsgroups are made up of about 220 newsgroups. In managed newsgroups, MSDN subscribers are guaranteed priority service, receiving responses to their technical questions within two business days.

Managed newsgroups have been established for discussions ranging from Microsoft .NET development and data access to Web services and graphics. MSDN Managed Client Newsgroups include microsoft.public.platformsdk.msi, microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms, and microsoft.public.win32.programmer.networks. Platformsdk.msi experts provide feedback on issues ranging from basic MSI customization questions to programmatically accessing the MSI using .NET-based applications. In the dotnet.framework.windowsforms newsgroups, users will find answers to questions regarding data adapters, DataGrids, and Windows Forms. Issues in the win32.programmer.network relate to the networking API, Peer-to-Peer (P2P), RAS, Remote Procedure Call (RPC), SNMP, Synchronization Manager and System Event Notification Service, UPnP Device Control/Host API, and more.

In addition, MSDN Managed Architecture Newsgroups include microsoft.public.vsnet.general and microsoft.public.dotnet.framework. The vsnet.general (Visual Studio .NET) newsgroup provides resources for debugging .NET-based applications, assistance with Web projects, including project creation, programming, and troubleshooting in Visual Basic and C#, and other application deployment concerns.

Just as in any public area of the Internet, it pays to be careful when disseminating your personal information. Since newsgroups are publicly available, any real e-mail address could be harvested for spam mail lists. Microsoft advises all news-group and community participants to use a modified version of their address to mitigate floods of unwanted e-mail, for example mmeditor_NO_SPAM@microsoft_NOSPAM.com. Used wisely, newsgroups provide an extremely efficient and valuable resource for quickly getting tech-nical help from individuals who have encountered the same problems that you have.

Outlook Express, which is part of Windows XP, can serve as a full-featured newsreader. To connect to the Microsoft public newsgroups, take the following steps:

1. Go to Tools | Accounts, click the News tab, and click Add | News.
2. Type in your name, then enter an e-mail address that's clear to other people but confusing to an automated reader.
3. When asked for the NNTP (news) server, enter msnews.microsoft.com and click OK.

You will be prompted to download newsgroups from the account you just added. Say yes; the first time you do this might be slow, but on most machines it'll take just a few seconds. This produces a list of all Microsoft newsgroups; you can filter by keyword and subscribe to newsgroups. Subscribing means only that you've told your reader that a newsgroup is of interest to you, and that you want it to be checked regularly for new messages. Double-click the groups to which you want to subscribe.

Now whenever you select the msnews.microsoft.com account you created, then click the Synchronize Account button, all the new messages in all of your subscribed newsgroups will be downloaded for local reading. You can easily change these settings; see your Outlook Express documentation for more information.