PM me if you want some help setting it all up - it can be a bit confusing at first.
Ell, A newsgroup is a discussion group on Usenet that is for talking about a specific topic e.g. alt.binaries.starwars would likely have discussions and files to do with star wars - alt.binaries.ilovemonkeys would have discussions and files for people who have a penchant for monkeys etc.
Newgroups can store files, messages, pictures etc. but you need a newsreader program to be able to connect to the newsgroup, browse/read what is there and download or post files or messages.
The big deal about newsgroups is that unlike a torrent or "Direct Connect" hub etc. you are not dependant on the speed of the 'uploader'. Once a file is on the newsgroup, you can typically download it at the full speed of your particular internet connection.
So if you are on a 1.5mb/512k ADSL connection for instance, you would get around 150KB per second when downloading from newsgroups. (Whereas you might only get 2K per second from a torrent if the uploader has a slow or busy connection.)
Some ISPs support newsgroups, so if you have a good ISP, you can just download a simple download oriented newsreader (like Grabit for the PC or Unison for the Mac), subscribe to alt.binaries.starwars, tell it to grab all the headers (This can take a while the first time - some newsgroups have over 4 million headers/files) and then choose the files to download.
If your ISP is not so good, then a lot of the files may display as incomplete, or not show up at all - in that case you need a 'newsgroup provider' and pay a monthly fee to get access to newsgroups. Companies like giganews provide this type of service, have extremely fast servers, and keep the files for over a month and the files are nearly always 100% complete, so they are well worth it unless your ISP is spectacular.
The provider will give you an account with a username and password, and you put that into your newsreader software and off you go.
Almost anything imaginable is out there on Newsgroups, from music, old TV shows, esoteric films, abandonware, special interest stuff - it is like a whole other internet of treasures waiting to be accessed at full speed.
Once you newsgroup, you can never go back....