Use the free Qmail to access online newsgroups!

The free Qmail is a really nice multi-purpose application. It's almost as powerful as the desktop Outlook and far more powerful than any other mailer clients on the Pocket PC.

It's not just a mailer client, though. It also supports NNTP (to access "traditional" newsgroups like those at Microsoft) and RSS feeds.

It has a unified interface; this means that it not only contains support for three entirely different protocols in the same application, but once you learn how to set up/configure an account to access a, say, RSS feed, you'll have a much easier time at setting up your mailing accounts and NNTP newsgroup access because of the same framework and the same, or, at least, similar settings dialog.

The similarities don't end at the GUI level, however. The file system (the only place where Qmail stores mail information, as opposed to, say, the built-in Pocket Inbox/Messaging client in the Windows Mobile operating system) stores mails, news messages and RSS feed messages in exactly the same way, giving absolute freedom to the user in managing these accounts and messages – for example, backing them up to his or her desktop PC, copying them to another Pocket PC. You just can't do the same with the built-in Messaging applications unless you really know what you're doing, on the WindowsCE system database level (see for example this article on how Messaging uses its internal databases if interested).

In this quick tutorial, I explain how you can use it to access NNTP newsgroups.

Download the latest nighly build from http://q3.snak.org/download/; to avoid searching on the mostly-Japanese page, just use this link for WM2003SE/WM5 devices. If you have a pre-WM2003SE device, use the following links instead: WM2003; PPC2k2; PPC2k/ARM / PPC2k/SH3 / PPC2k/MIPS.

Create a directory on your Pocket PC and copy the uncompressed contents of the ZIP in there. Start q3u.exe.

In the first dialog, just point to the current directory (or, for that matter, any directory where you want to store its data at).

Then, just go to Tool/Account... and click 'Add Account...'. Fill in/set the fields as follows (the name can be anything):

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You need to enter the NNTP server name (say, msnews.microsoft.com with the public MS newsgroups) to the two text input fields in the Host information group. Here, you can also fill in the User Information fields:

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As public newsgroups aren't password-protected, you don't need to touch the User tab. If you do need authorization (like with the Microsoft MVP private newsgroups), you'll need to fill in the logins/passwords to both (incoming/outgoing) groups there.

Now, exit the Accounts dialog, choose the newly-added NNTP server from the folder drop-down menu at the top:

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Tap and hold the screen, and click Subscribe to Group... in the context menu:

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In the new dialog (the auto-fetched list of the available newsgroups), just highlight the newsgroup you want to subscribe to:

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and click OK. Note that mass-selection won't work (not even with the standard Win(CE) Shift/Control keys on built-in on-screen keyboard) - you'll need to explicitly return to this list to subscribe to more newsgroups each time. This is indeed a pain in the back - but it's still much easier than subscribing to each newsgroup by entering their name, as was the case in earlier Qmail versions.

If you don't want to know how earlier Qmail versions must be configured to access newsgroups, you can safely skip the next section - you can go straight to the "Some additional tips" section.

Note that pre-April 2006 versions of Qmail didn't have the Subscribe to Group... menu item in the context menu. With them, it was har more complicated to subscribe to individual newsgroups on an NNTP server. This is how it should be done:

Tap and hold the screen, and click Create in the context menu:

(Note that
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Fill in the newsgroup name in the "Name" field; for example, microsoft.public.pocketpc (you'll find their entire list at http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspx):

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You can repeat the last few steps many times to add as many newsgroups to be accessed on the same NNTP server as needed.

After this, you can start synchronizing (Tool/Sync; or just click the synchronize icon), reading and posting right away.

Some additional tips

1. if you want to raise the (by default, 300) number of messages fetched, go to the NNTP tab in the account (server) properties and raise 300 to something higher. You may want to do this before the first synchronization, though!

2. if you want to override the default download behaviour ("to save bandwidth usage, only download the headers, not the body itself"), go to the Advanced tab and choose NNTP All
3. Particularly with NNTP servers, you will want to consider using the tree view instead of the basic timeline view. To enable it, enable View/Sort/Thread. The results are as can be seen in this screenshot. See the difference?
4. If you want to refetch all your messages with the new settings (for example, you want to download all messages, not just the last 300), you may want to consider deleting all files inside accounts/<the name you gave to the account; for example, Microsoft Newsgroups> in the file system, except for two files, account.xml and folders.xml. Then, restart Qmail and make a new synchronization; all the NNTP messages will be fetched.

Please note that the above is just a quick tutorial on setting up/fine-tuning NNTP accounts. I'll publish a much-much more thorough tutorial on Qmail in the near future – this application is definitely worth it. Also note that I've published a full comparison of Pocket PC mailer applications here.