Binary newsgroups contain more than just pictures. For near CD-quality music, search for mp3 files in the sounds and music newsgroups. Play the files with a free program called WinAmp.

www.jammed.com maintains a list of open news servers. Check it out if your internet provider's server doesn't work with Binary Boy. Also see the 'Search Yahoo' option under the help menu for other lists of servers.

Sometimes the main window shows that far more articles were downloaded than were actually decoded and stored in the download folder. Usually this is because your search string downloaded many articles that didn't contain a file. Multipart messages also cause a high download number with few files because each part is counted as a download but only one file is produced.

Some articles don't have a filename in the subject. To avoid missing out on these files, don't restrict your searches only to file extensions. Create more general search strings like: .jpg or .gif or picture or Southpark or Butthead

A blank search string matches nothing.

Each article has 4 chances to match a search string -- the global string, the current search string, the list search string and the current newsgroup's search string. If it matches any of these, it will be downloaded unless it matches any of the filters.

An article will not be downloaded if it matches ANY of the filter strings.

In addition to filtering by subject, you can eliminate articles based on any line in the header. Click on the settings button and select the Header Filter tab. Type the filter criteria. For example: "From:" and "@spam.domain.com"

Several options listed in the help file are available only from the command-line. To use command-line switches, click on the Windows Start button, then select Run. Now type binboy.exe followed by the options. For example, binboy.exe -log enables logging.