There are other benefits to the forums that I didn't get into in the mail I sent to the private newsgroups such as moderation, security, identity, reputation building, etc. When it comes to NNTP access and offline support I suggest you check out this thread and join in on the discussion. http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=690 What if there were a free outlook client for the forums? Just something to think about...
When it comes to replacing the public newsgroups. I don't see that as happening in the near future. However the trend in the developer space has been toward forums for the last couple of years. Posting in the MS developer newsgroups has gone down 8% each of the last two years and you can see a corresponding increase in the number of visitors to developer forum sites. I believe there is a strong enough community in the newsgroup world to keep it alive for a good long time and its not the intention of this site to replace the public newsgroups. We did believe, however, that if we were going to invite the 80% of developers that don't participate in online communities into a discussion area from Visual Studio the forums offered a friendlier environment for them. I honestly think there is room for both and searches like google and msn should return results from both places so that the majority of people that never actually post will benefit from all of the Q & A.
