It worked some of the time, but other times, I would open the newsgroup and
while I was reading messages, I would get an email that needed my immediate
attention. And when I closed my newsreader, all the messages were marked read
and I would lose my place when I went back to it.

That used to happen to me unintentionally several years ago. I used to haunt a
large AOL news forum and, for a while, AOL would cut us off ramdomly. To
counter that, I would at the beginning just ask for the last day's worth, read
or unread, and then mark everything read as I left the session. That would get
rid of anything older than one day.

Bill, K5BY