Hi: Usenet gave me a free 14-day trial period and I have been trying to remember things I always have wanted to download. I could, indeed, download a book on chess that I couldn't find anywhere. However, each time I enter a set of words to look for (it has a box where one can enter, for example, the title of a book or CD and a search in certain data bases is initiated), a large quantity of quite unrelated items appears. Is there an intelligent way to use Usenet? The reading of the help has been of little use.

EDIT: example: if the search string I put is 'droysen' then not a single result contains that word.

The book may not be available; if it was available, the posts may have expired. If there are copyright issues, the name of the book might have been obsfucated. Different news providers have different levels of retention. If it is available, it's likely yenc'ed and/or rar'ed. Rar is the compression method of choice for most binary newsgroups.

Almost all international newsgroups in the principle newsgroup hierarchies (alt., comp., and so on) default to English.

Many newservers only keep a certain posts online for a limited amount of time (it's called "retention" in news-speek).

Depending on what newsgroups you visit, you may find them awash in trolls, spammers, and malware; over the years, I have seen several newsgroups go to hell and be abandoned by legitimate users. Usenet has many wild and woolly neighborhoods and back alleys.

I use Giganews and have used it with satisfaction for years; it has excellent retention (we're talking years), but a subscription costs money (several tiers of subscription are available).

Their FAQ might answer some of your questions. http://www.giganews.com/support/usenet/#usenet

Wikipedia has a very good article on Usenet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

Yes, I already read it. I tell you I have a program sent by them which manages all the search and download thing. Running it is the way I use to communicate with usenet. But now something new happened. In Settings>Account, the Search Server box is empty and deactivated. And, naturally, the search engine is now useless. Do you know of a way to fix this?

Another thing, if it's no too much. I have no way to know if I am logged in or not! The only way is trying to download something and see what happens.