My ISP (any I suspect many others at least in the US) no longer hosts
newsgroup access, supposedly due to widespread "piracy"/security issues on
Newsgroup servers. I've had no luck locating a free newsgroup host and
these MS ones are the last ones I could access (at least that I was
interested in), so for me this truly is "the end"....

Tim

"Bob Phillips" wrote in message
...
A thought here, is everyone connecting to the NGs via the MS newsserver, or
via another newsserver? Will the others continue?

Bob

wrote in message
...
Date 5/4/2010
Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively closing
down the Microsoft public newsgroups to enrich conversations in the
rapidly-growing forum platform. This decision is in response to
worldwide market trends and evolving customer needs.

Microsoft continues to invest in forums to reduce customer effort,
consolidate community venues and make it easier for active contributors
to retain their influence. Forums provide a healthy community environment
with less spam and make answers easier to find by customers and search
engines. Additionally, forums offer a better user and off-topic
management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by
facilitating discussions in a clean space.

We understand that some newsgroups are still active, and important to the
community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be rolling out tools
and resources to minimize disruption to the community discussions.

We are working diligently on providing additional resources and
information in local languages later this week. In the meantime, please
refer to the official Microsoft Newsgroup website
http://www.microsoft.com/communities...s/default.mspx concerning
this issue. The Microsoft Newsgroup website will be made available in
additional languages in the next few days.