• Free Agent
• Agent
• Useful Links

Agent and FreeAgent
The main thing to remember is that Agent is an offline reader as opposed to OE/NS which are online readers.

Free Agent

Introduction

FreeAgent is a newsgroup reader. It is a cut down version of the Agent application which you can update to by purchasing on line. Updating to the full version will give full email and multi user facilities. FreeAgent does NOT have the original program's email or multi-user facility, but it offers exceptional features for accessing newsgroups You can SEND email and Newsgroup posts but you cannot receive email with the free version.

In order to set up FreeAgent for use with Blueyonder you will need to know the servers that Blueyonder use. These can be found on blueyonder's Technical Support page - and are also listed below:

• SMTP outgoing mail server: smtp.blueyonder.co.uk
• News server: news.blueyonder.co.uk This server carries everything available from BY
• News server: news-text.blueyonder.co.uk This server carries text only All binaries are stripped out, result is fast text only posts

You will also need your user name and password - as supplied by BY.

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Getting Started

Having installed FreeAgent - open the program.

You will then be asked a series of questions -

In the box that appears Type in the name you wish to be displayed When someone receives the mail ie: John (When they receive mail it will display "From John" in their mail box)If you are female it would be wise to use a non gender nickname here.(it helps a little stopping cranky posts)

Click Next

As you already have an email address type it in It would be best to munge your address by adding NOSPAM AFTER the @ in your email address : youralias@NOSPAMblueyonder.co.uk

Click Next

Your SMTP IS = smtp.blueyonder.co.uk

Your news server is = news.blueyonder.co.uk You will now be taken on line to download the full list of available newsgroups.

This will take about twenty-minutes with a 56k modem to download about 25.000 newsgroups.

Your mail reader is now set up for your accounts.

The newsgroups will appear in the top left box, scan through them and double click any group that you may have an interest in.

An options box will pop up. If you know you want that group "click" subscribe.
If you just want to get a feel of the group "select" the number of headers to sample and click sample headers (this will give you a sample of the posts in the group).

These will appear in the top right box.

Just double click on the subject header to open the post or click on the plus sign to expand the group postings to see all the replies Double click on a subject and it will appear in the bottom window.

To reply to a newsgroup message, go to POST in the tool bar click Follow UP.
Type what you wish to say and click SEND NOW or SEND LATER.
Your reply will be sent including all the original text above your typing, so a little bit of snipping would be wise.

Enjoy your newsgroups.

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Agent

Full Agent summary

Agent opens up all the options that were blocked in the Free Version, and allows the posting of Mail. For Mail you will need to add "pop3.blueyonder.co.uk" to your setup.

It must be stressed that Agent is primarily an offline reader. Articles can be marked for later unatttended download, which is why Agent is a very popular program for binary newshounds.

By default multi-part articles (mp3, movies etc) appear combined as one article for downloading, although there are options available to split before downloading and recombine after retrieval (from different news servers and even seperate Agent instances possibly).

Once an article has been downloaded it is permanently there for reading until you delete it unless you set the 'Purge' options to do otherwise.

If an article has a binary attachment, it can be sAved (press A), or Launched (press L) in its Windows associated program (or the associated program can be changed specifically for Agent).

This is a major difference to Netscape/OE which handle article viewing within the program.

The nice thing with Agent is that there are many many keyboard shortcuts.

Press Ctrl+S to subscribe/unsubscribe to any selected newsgroups Alt=O, S will give you the dialogue box to select the number/timespan of any groups you want to sample.

To reply to a newsgroup message just press P. F lets you follow up an article. R lets you Reply by email. Alt+S Lets you send now, whilst Alt+L Lets you send later.

How do you purchase agent, Online only?
No you can purchase Agent via Web, Fax, Mail, All will do. details here http://www.forteinc.com/agent/order.php.

What method of payment? is it credit card only
No, Credit Card, Money Order or Personal Cheque, details at the above

To view all of Agents features have a look at :
http://www.forteinc.com/agent/features.php.

This chart compares Agent and Free Agent side-by-side. But the main things to most users are :

• In News Agent has :
  yEnc decoding.
  Kill and Watch Lists.
  Folders.
  Sort on different columns, Size/Thread, Subject, Author or Date.

• In Mail :
  Message threading (similar to news threading)
  Use of MAPI (corportate) protocol for posting

• Common to both Agent and FreeAgent
  Filters and Custom Views
  Folders
  Multi-Ligual Spell Checking

You are now ready to select which groups you wish to subscribe to, and post to your hearts content.
Regards Jimbo (Many thanks to BJtheDJ for assistance with this page)

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Here are some useful Agent links

• http://loganact.com/agent/agentfaq.html

• http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

Last Amended : 2004-08-07 by elfin
Original Author : Jimbo