Positive impact:
You would only download headers, you would not flood your mailbox. You can change your subscribed account settings, for your subscribed account to not recieve mail.
For responding to posts, you would only have to perform simple changes to reply.
Negative impact:
With regular mail, you recieve only those messages that were not sent to your pop account. You can mail as you are used to.
You don't have to change your mailing address, reply to all and remove the newsgroup setting.
Jim
-- character density, n.: The number of very weird people in the office.
