[Starson17]

Originally Posted by PaulSmi

...checking there's an Internet connection before it starts trying to fetch news. ...
Please, please, please add it in as soon as you can is it is soooo frustrating if you're on a laptop that's not always connected..

Why not just turn off the automatic fetch, and move it into a batch file that runs in the Windows scheduler (or cron, etc.). Here's a quickie for Windows that will detect internet connectivity:

@echo off
ECHO Checking connection, please wait...
PING -n 1 www.google.com|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :SUCCESS
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :TRYAGAIN

:TRYAGAIN
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO Let me try a bit more, please wait...
@echo off
PING -n 3 www.google.com|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :SUCCESS2
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :TRYIP

:TRYIP
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO Checking DNS...
ECHO Lets try by IP address...
@echo off
ping -n 1 216.239.37.99|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :SUCCESSDNS
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :TRYROUTER

:TRYROUTER
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO Lets try pinging the router....
ping -n 2 192.168.1.1|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :ROUTERSUCCESS
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :NETDOWN

:ROUTERSUCCESS
ECHO It appears that you can reach the router, but internet is unreachable.
goto :FAILURE

:NETDOWN
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO It appears that you having network issues, the router cannot be reached.
goto :FAILURE

:SUCCESSDNS
ECHO It appears that you are having DNS issues.
goto :FAILURE

:SUCCESS
ECHO You have an active Internet connection
pause
goto END

:SUCCESS2
ECHO You have an active internet connection but some packet loss was detected.
pause
goto :END

:FAILURE
ECHO You do not have an active Internet connection
pause
goto :END