Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - Posts

Microsoft.Private.Whidbey.* Newsgroups - Use Them!

[UPDATE:  The newsgroups have now been migrated to the new MSDN Forums at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/]

I'm surprised that more people don't take advantage of the NNTP-based groups that Microsoft make available specifically for Whidbey and Team System information.  There are about a dozen groups on Team System alone and others on ASP.NET 2.0, .NET languages, Visual Studio 2005, VSTO, etc.  I generally see responses from Microsoft employees within a couple of days to most questions.  There's probably a better chance you'll get a (correct) response there than by a post on your blog, which can get lost in the noise.  Of course, you can always do both!

There is a browser-based interface:

http://communities.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.asp?icp=whidbey&slcid=us

Or they can be accessed via an NNTP reader (e.g. Outlook Express, Agent 2.0, etc.) to:

  • Server: privatenews.microsoft.com
  • Account name: privatenews\VSUser
  • Password: Password

The more people use these groups, the better they'll be.  So, yes, I'm being selfish by asking you to use them.  :)

-Chris