Friday, August 21, 2009

How to Participate in the SBS 2008 Newsgroups

Windows Small Business Server 2008

This morning I awoke to a mail in my inbox regarding participation in the Windows Small Business Server 2008 newsgroups.  Newsgroups are forums that are monitored by Microsoft Employees as well as Microsoft MVPs (or Most Valuable Professionals).  It’s a place where you can attempt to get free support before calling Microsoft, so you should know how to get into the Newsgroups.

First, point your browser over to the SBS 2008 Connect Webpage.  In the top left, you will see a link to “Newsgroups”.

From this link you can dive right in and start participating within the newsgroup.  But viewing on the webpage can sometimes be cumbersome.  Above the newsgroup list, you will see an “NNTP Setup Instructions” link:

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This link will let you set your password for the newsgroups (this can take up to 5 hours to set in the system), and then give you instructions for configuring the newsgroup inside a newsgroup reader such as Windows Live Mail (Win7), Windows Mail (Vista) or Outlook Express (XP).

I usually like to change the options to download more than 300 messages at a time, and I always leave it running as to not miss anything.  When you set-up a newsgroup account, I’d recommend using an email address that a human could understand, but that doesn’t resolve directly to your mailbox to prevent “bots” from spamming you.  For example, if you’re email is foo@bar.com, then consider entering it as foo@online.bar.com, or foo@delete.bar.com.


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