Broadband

[Fluff Muppet]

Hi, I recently bought a new computer and have access to the internet. As it's a bit slow I contacted my phone company to inquire about getting a faster line. They told me that broadband was much quicker and I'd have no trouble then. It is rather expensive though and I was wondering if it would be better if there was someway of downloading the internet onto my machine and then looking at it 'offline'. Maybe I could burn it to cd's or something? I have a pretty big hard drive 2 giga hurts and I also I have a spindle of 50 cd's. Would the web fit on them or would I need more? It's just that I think it'd be a better idea than connecting all the time.

[jenstar]

The web consists of millions of pages hosted on millions of computers all over the world, so as far as the question you ask goes, the answer is no - you can't fit it all on 50 CDs. However, the real point is, can you save web pages you visit so that you can read them properly later? And to that one, the answer is yes. In fact your browser probably saves them already - all you have to do is navigate through them. If you're using Internet Explorer, the browser which comes as part of Windows, then simply bring up the "History" window (click on the "History" icon at the top of the screen) and you can see a list of recently-visited pages. Click on them and they will be brought out of the cache - and you don't have to be online. (Note that not all web pages will work properly if viewed offline, but this should work for most pages.)

[Fluff Muppet]

Brilliant Jenstar! I'll give it a go. what about a 100 cd's? My friend has a dvd recorder. I heard they are much bigger. What about 50 dvds?

[sft42]

Fluff Muppet I think if you want to store the entire net on dvd's then you should maybe invest in a manufacturing company and gear it up to supply you alone.....even at a conservative guesses, one dvd storing 4.7 gig then you'd need a fair few to store the surface Web 4 billion pages (approx) & this equates to (approx again) 40 - 80 terabytes of info....someone else can do the maths on this one but lets say you'd need a lot of DVD's!

If you'd like more info on the size of the web check out this link http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how
-much-info/internet.html

[Fluff Muppet]

Aww that's a shame. Can you buy terabyte recorders from Dixons? I don't know if I can afford it this month though after buying the new computer. It'll be save save save from now on.

[anthomson]

The Google search engine caches all of the pages it trawls - so they must have a copy of a pretty large chunk of the web on their PC. Ask them how many CD's they used.

[romano]

i think somewonehas been pulling one's leg! :}

[Fluff Muppet]

Why? Is someone lying to me? Is the web not as big as they make it out to be? Do you think could get onto a few cd's Anthomson? Let me know. Fluff Muppet

[shybearuk]

I am assuming that this is a joke question, but just on the offchance that it isn't, Fluff Muppet, if the 'Net is made up of around 60Tb of information, and you burn 4.7Gb to each DVD that you use, you would need something in the region of 125,000 DVDs. At a pound each, which is the first price I came up with from Googling, in packs of 25, you're looking at around �125,000. Now if you have broadband, which should set you back between �10-30 per month, you're going to get nearly �350 years of online time for the same price. I think it's fairly easy to see the better choice. And besides, what if you downloaded the 'Net and then someone changed one page? You'd still have to connect to find the updated page. ;o)

[shybearuk]

oops, 350 years, not �350 years., and that was working with the higher price of �30 per month.

[ajmmac]

you say ur hard disk is 2 giga hurts--i think u mean the speed of ur processor is 2 giga hurts--with a brand new computer and that speed of processor i would be exploring why it is slow