Look at MesNews as a pure news server.
I use both Thunderbird and MesNews for news.
MesNews is much quicker and is a dedicated news reader with better
options than TBird. I use TBird for mail mostly but TBird has gotten
very sloooooow.

MesNews
http://www.mesnews.net/gb/

click the .download in the left column.

Get the spel checkar too! lol

All Free two!

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