Unless I'm missing something, there's no easy way to tell if you have already read a posting or not (as you could do on the defunct Forum). In other words, you cannot easily tell whether there's been new postings to a thread since the last time you looked.

If I'm right, that's a real downer. If I'm wrong about the above, please straighten me out.

But ... something's better than nothing. But I guess I'm suggesting that we should keep looking for the best alternative.

Maybe a Usenet newsgroup would be a better board -- for example, maybe alt.music.synth.technics. There's already ones there for Roland and Kurzweil.

Just an idea.

Larry

Larry,
I am also getting used to this new format and
I think that it will be OK. On my screen, the new postings are in green and after I have read them they change to yellow.

Dayle,

I agree that the green-->yellow change happens for new threads (or topics, as they call them). But within a topic, there doesn't seem to be a similar coding of individual replies.

In other words, even though the topic may be yellow (I've read the topic before), there may or not be new postings that I haven't read. The only way to find out is to go look at the topic and re-read the entire thread.

Oh well. Nothing is perfect -- except me, of course. ;-)

Larry

I agree Larry that this new format has some drawbacks but I think there may be advantages
too.

The number to the right of your name in the thread header tells you how many responses have been added. That's useful if you can remember the count at your last login.

I like seeing the whole thread in one load rather than collecting each response individually. And of course this makes archiving any subject so easy.

There are two other benefits I particularly applaud. We no longer have some responses that quote the whole of a previous message and just add "me too". It also restricts those who insisted on changing the thread header by trying to type their entire message there.

So on balance I prefer this format.

And hi everyone, hope to see more of our Technics Forum friends migrating here.

Cheers, John.

I agree with John about the advantages. Plus, I especially like the feature wherein, if one chooses, it will notify you by email if there has been a response to your posting.

Larry

You can see exactly when the last post was made it a string by looking at the last column on the main page.
Also the thread with the most recent response is moved to the top of the page.
I like it! It's much faster, at least on my old computer.
Don

I love the ability to perform "customized" searches for "specific" criteria over the entire (or only specific discusiion areas) of the Synth Zone BBS board.
What a great way to keep in touch with what's going on in "all areas" of the internet Synth-Keyboard community.

Also enjoy reading "member profiles". Great way to connect with others with similar interests.

There are always going to be tradeoffs chosing one discussion system over another. Most of the forums here changed over a year ago, mainly forced by lots of spamming on the forums, abusive messages etc. It was always just a small handful of course responsible, but it meant the introduction of the registration process (which incidentally stopped the problem)

But the thing I liked least about the old system was the fact that you couldn't search and that the page just grew and grew and grew. And without killing a whole lot of messages (which I don't like to do) there was no way to have a manageable archive.

This BBS system is constantly being updated as well so there are always new features coming being added. It's not perfect but it is about the best one I know about. Sorry to those who preferred the old system, I know it's a bummer when a format you are comfortable with changes. It was just an administrative headache for me to keep maintaining it the old way.