Dave Peterson wrote:
Just testing to see if I can post to MS Servers.

There's a BIG difference between posting to the microsoft.public.*
newsgroups generally vs posting to them specifically on
msnews.microsoft.com nntp servers. Microsoft has pulled the plug on
their own msnews.microsoft.com servers, but as long as ISPs and Google
Groups continue to support the microsoft.public.* newsgroups, they
won't disappear.

Consider: there are still postings to
microsoft.public.excel.worksheetfunctions (note only 3 periods). They
just don't go through the msnews.microsoft.com servers. I'd note that
it appears you posted through a Verizon account, and I'm reading and
responding to it through Google Groups.

This is the strength of USENET/NNPT. It was meant to keep working even
if a country or even a continent or two sank into the ocean. As long
as ISPs retain microsoft.public.* newsgroups in their NNTP servers'
newsgroups lists, it'll remain possible to continue to use them. In
the short term the only thing that won't be possible is accessing them
through msnews.microsoft.com.

That said, the one drawback to ISP-hosted newsgroups is latency. ISPs
tend to delete newsgroup messages after a short period of time, as
short as 2 days on some, as long as a few months on others, but there
won't be 12 months or more of postings like there was on
msnews.microsoft.com servers. Google Groups remains the best archive
of old postings.