Wikipedia on my laptop!

Want to know some details of something? No problem! I just go to Wikipedia and search for it. Rather in my Firefox browser, I have set up Wikipedia search engine so I can simply search an item on Wikipedia at a single click. During leisure time, I simply search a random term on Wikipedia and get into reading something interesting and useful stuff. However, the problem comes up when I am not connected to internet. But now I have got a solution to this problem too.

I have downloaded Webaroo software on my machine. It allows me to download many web packs, the logical collection of web pages, specially created by Webaroo team. One of these web packs, the largest one is the Wikipedia. Yes, they have seemingly packed whole of Wikipedia in less than 10GB, which can be downloaded on local disk (and mobile!). I have downloaded it on my hard disk and now I can search through it and read required articles, even when I am not connected to internet.

So do I get the same experience of Wikipedia browsing as I get online? Not really! Firstly, the images are not part of this web pack. So I miss on them. Secondly, only Wikipedia articles are downloaded so I can't surf out from Wikipedia to referred external sites. But then does it bother me? Not really! It's alway better to have something to read than not having anything of it! -:)

BTW the Webaroo also allows to download the web sites. One has to provide a link and the depth of web site to be downloaded in terms of number of links. This becomes a little dicey because a typical web site may have many links, in which I am not interested. Nevertheless, this facility also seems to be exciting. I have just downloaded the IASA IT Architect Skills Library. While it downloaded quite a few pages not required by me, I could get all pages needed by me. So now I will not have an excuse of not being connected to internet for not reading Wikipedia and IASA IT Architect Skills Library!