newgroups are easy peeps.........but the torrents are always handy for some good grabs, i bet you didn't have your ports opended up ? if not then you can't connect to all the seeds/peers, thus making the torrent slow ? BUT, then again mines playing up and being a pain in the ass so i get yi.....
NEWSGROUPS: easy.......go and get "grabit" it's free and then you can get on the newsgroups......for instance televest has there own newsgroup it's free and you can get access to it and download.......there's also " easynews" you have to pay for it like 4 quid a month, but they have all the latest stuff out there.......now i'm sure there will be loads and loads so it's up to you to find them, but you'd be suprised what you find on your door step...
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the RAR'S and PARS and that, a proggy is split into say.......40 chuncks and you some times have to repair the chunks with pars, i can get techno on yi but not yet......so it's ok for the odd mp3, or the odd video, but if it's games/large programs then your gonna have to learn the par and the rar way of the fist ! lololol
Easy really
Good luck !