I think most internet providers also have Usenet access that people are
paying for but probably don't realize it.  You can also access the
newsgroups through Google Groups for free.  If you register (for free) you
can also post to the groups.  You can use Google until you figure out what
your internet provider has.

www.google.com
Select "groups" from the links under "Google".
Select "alt" from the group hierarchies.
From the pull-down menu, select where "support" would be located
alphabetically (i.e. stop..syquest).
Select alt.support.* from the list.
Go through the alt.support groups until you see alt.support.epilepsy.
There, you can read the group articles.
Once you're there, you can just bookmark that page so you can go straight to
it later.

In the upper-right there's a link to post to the group.  You can sign in to
your Google account and then post.  Signing up for an account is free.  It
seems to work fine.

My stupid computer's modem just died.  LOL - what luck, huh?  It is
going to take a week or so to get a new one and install it.  So, this
e-mail is going to be up until the end of October since I will have to
pay for it before I can get the other one running.  Need to e-mail -
send it here for now.

Can you use google groups to get here?

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=alt.support.epilepsy

true true

ok... most ISPs have usenet newsgroup access that do not require the use
of the www, or a web browser. One option would be to configure outlook
express by entering the ISPs news server name (news.isp.com or something
like that), download the names of all the groups (many many 1000s), and
from that list pick and choose the ones you want to 'suscribe to', in the
sense that the program will keep only these names near the inbox/outbook
and keep the master list elsewhere.

Heres an MS link for outlook express news (and some other things). The MS
link wraps on the page so this tinyurl is used instead.
http://tinyurl.com/6xq5v

The program that I like to use is Xnews. Its free and its a dedicated
newsgroup reader thats easier to use. No html formatting tho... which I
dont really like anyway.
http://www.download.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=xnews&tg=dl-2001

btw... google groups is really just www access to usenet groups. Usenet
does not require the www or an email address (I dunno about google). As
you can see mine is fake to spoof spambots, which took a yahoo address of
mine from another group and caused no end of hastle.

What you need:
computer with simple internet access (www not needed)
newsgroup access (which is usually standard)
newsgroup servername (usually news.yourisp.com)
username (usually same one used to access email server)
password (if needed, usually same one used to access email server)
and one of the two programs mentioned above, or one like it.

Once set up, send a couple test posts either here if nobody minds (there
are some sticklers about that in various groups), or go to alt.test and
try there.