A
arnuld
By itself, Pan is not a replacement for Google Groups.
that's quite understood.
Many web based programming sites archives Usenet groups that deal with
their subject. For example a C or C++ forum may archive the contents of
c.l.c and c.l.c++ alone.
I did not find any single one of them. A Google/Yahoo search tells me that
most offer paid services to USENET. The only free one I have found is
mail2web:
http://services.mail2web.com/FreeServices/Usenet/
even they run much behind e.g. the recent posts just do not appear. Latest
post is of yesterday and their search is pretty bad. If you search for
"learn C++" you will not come up with anything at all :\ . On the other
side, Newsreader like PAN and gnus are still Desktop based software, means
you loose your settings when you change your computer. I don't like this.
What if the same happens to your email ? I will feel like I am using
Outlook Express to read my mail :\
so, keeping rest (evil, spam) aside, Google is the "King of USENET", they offer
web-based service, you need only a web-broweser to access the USENET and the
biggest collection of archives totally at no charge. They also do spelling correction
of your posts.
So Google offers what no one offers and no one is going to.