With this type of software enhancement to your favorite Internet browser, you can avoid excessive line charges, save time downloading image-intensive web pages and repeatedly review material of interest without going on-line. How do you achieve this convenience and make web surfing more productive? The solution is simple, install an off-line browser to automatically download and stash web pages, files and images on your computer’s hard drive. Now files and images load at the speed of your system and at a fraction of the time when on-line. You can even share web pages with co-workers and, for example, set up all the case-of-the-month contributions for resident teaching.

How efficient are such off-line browsers? Well as a test, I recently used one such tool to downloaded 3 megabytes of our web site, which included 148 images, in under 8 minutes! And, at least with Windows 95, this can be done in the background while you are doing other computer tasks. Once these files are installed, really cached, on your hard drive, the main payoffs are the speed at which you can access the cached site, load images and go from link to link all without an Internet connection.

There are at least 10 off-line browsers currently available and all work with the two principal on-line browsers, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer. Some off-line browsers integrate with these on-line browsers, but most have their web-gathering features available on your computer screen as a floating, customizable tool bar. For the most part, all are easy to learn, give you some degree of control over scheduling downloads and the amount of data you wish to capture to your hard drive. In all cases, when the off-line browser is not running, Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer operate normally. While using an off-line browser, both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer can read the web pages either from the stored cache or via the live Internet connection. Other useful features may be available. For example, one off-line browser, Web Buddy, readily converts cached web pages to word processor documents. It is also has the unique ability to download and store web pages on storage devices such as ZIP, JAZ and magneto-optical drives, thus freeing up valuable space on your hard drive.

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