I've only been using newsgroups, often referred to as Usenet, for 1 year, even though I've used the World Wide Web for 12 years, so I think I can help you. I've used M.S. Outlook Express, Mozilla SeaMonkey, but now I use Mozilla Thunderbird and Xnews newsreaders, all of which are free. Your ISP probably already offers a free newsgroup server, but not for every newsgroup that exists. If not, you have to pay for access to a server like Giganews (which is what Mozilla uses). Newsgroups are simply public email bulletin boards, that are a large part of the internet that pre-dates the World Wide Web.
After a few weeks or a few months, posts expire on newsgroups, and newsreaders won't show them anymore. Therefore, I use the Google Groups web-based newsreader because it includes a giant newsgroup archive that you can search for expired newsgroup posts. You can upload simple text newsgroup posts with Google Groups, but it can't attach pictures. There are a lot of web-based newsreaders today such as Microsoft's at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/commnews/ , which is good for Outlook Express support.
I want to introduce beginners to Mozilla's Thunderbird, but M.S. Outlook Express is very similar. Everyone has had contact with the M.S. Outlook Express email client/newsreader because we have all clicked on a website email address only to have the M.S. Outlook Express pop-up appear as a unconfigured default email client.
To use Mozilla Thunderbird, download the program for free at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ or CNET's http://www.download.com/1770-20_4-0.html?query=mozilla+Thunderbird&tag=srch&searchtype=downloads&filterName=platform%3DWindows&filter=platform%3DWindows .
To learn how to subscribe to newsgroups, use Mozilla's graphical directions on how to subscribe to Mozilla's support newsgroups at http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/ > "step-by-step tutorial." To subscribe to your Mozilla's support newsgroups Go Thunderbird > Tools > Account Settings > Add Account > Newsgroup account > You are asked to enter a screen name and a email address (To avoid spam you may go JoeSmith@REMOVETHISyahoo.com for example) > use the NNTP "news.mozilla.org" > Enter account name news.mozilla.org > Finish > news.mozilla.org account > Manage newsgroup subscriptions > subscribe to the mozilla.support.thunderbird newsgroup. Beware that your ISP may provide a newsgroup with the same name as Mozilla's mozilla.support.thunderbird newsgroup, but that does not mean they are the same newsgroup.
My ISP gives me about 85 000 newsgroups to choose from. To create an account for those, use the same steps as above for creating your news.mozilla.org newsgroup account except the NNTP is usually your ISP followed by "news," so in my case my NNTP is "shawnews." If you entered the wrong NNTP name, or if your ISP doesn't provide a newsgroup server, you will get an "Alert" pop-up saying "failed to connect to server," in which case you should contact your ISP, and ask them if they provide a NNTP newsgroup server. You may be able to just use "news" for an account name as well; however, I just tested that, and for me the "news" account has fewer newsgroups to choose from than for my "shawnews" account.
Newsgroups appeal to people for their unmonitored free speech. Don't be too annoying however because everyone will end up blocking your posts and badmouthing you. Newsgroups have a bad reputation for having the odd child porn posted, so be prepared to report them as I do to Canada's https://www.cybertip.ca/app/en/report .
I also use Xnews for downloading pictures as well as a very small amount of video, the longest being 10 minutes. Xnews is a newsreader designed for decoding the common yEnc picture format, which Thunderbird can't do and for downloading 100's or 1000's of pictures at a time in a queue. With Thunderbird or Outlook Express, you would be going "Save Image As" one jpeg picture at a time. Xnews has the look and feel of a homemade program which means the support is not so good. It uses the newsgroup news.software.readers as its only major support.
I briefly tried Mozilla's SeaMonkey. It's gimmick is to combine a browser, a newsreader, and an IRC chat client into one program. I only use the IRC chat client because SeaMonkey's newsreader was slower than Thunderbird for me. I don't think there is a need to combine a browser and newsreader into one program anyways.
A lot of newsreaders are also email clients, for which I have experience; however, unless you need to process a lot of email offline, I don't think it is worth the effort to use Outlook Express or Thunderbird as an email client. Web-based email like Gmail and Yahoo work fine. The convenience of being able to click on a website email address and having your default email client send the message through your web-based email account is not that great, which is why most people just copy the email address from the Outlook Express pop-ups into their web-based email account.
Email clients are more technical than newsreaders, but if you still want to configure your Thunderbird as a default email client as well, I refer you to this Yahoo Answers post of mine which won best answer: https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20080802204403AAnRS9J&show=7#profile-info-tOPKwKCcaa .