Thats the original internet, used to be only 25,000 news groups, now it's over 100,000... I use it regular, when you do a google or dejanews search thats what you are searching in case you didn't know, rec.willys+jeep is a good newsgroup, as is rec.motorcycles, I'm also a DoD member....the original internet motorcycle club...
Then there's the alt.binaries but I wont go into detail on them, suffice to say you need a good ISP who does not limit your newgroup bandwidth, those x rated movies fill it fast...
The easiest newreader is Xnews, runs in its own directory and does not interact with the OS like the others.