>>>I am checking out Free Agent, if it doesn't turn out to be that much better I will go back and RTFM of OE.

For others reading here, what I do is make a rule that
1. Marks my posts as read (so I don't see them
2. Marks the thread as "Watched" which makes the little eyeglasses appear. Subsequent messages are highlighted with color and the highlighting also shows in the tree on the left so you can see which newsgroups you have replies in.