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GOTO Software MemoWeb
By Paul Lanyon - February 2, 2001
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First off I better explain to you what MemoWeb is. MemoWeb downloads and stores different parts of web sites for you. Let's say you find an interesting web site and you want to store it so you always have it and can easily get all of the information from it. This is what MemoWeb does. When you find a site that you want stored on your hard drive or onto a CD, you just click on Grab! and MemoWeb will download this page for you, asking you a couple of questions in between. You have the options to download just the images, just the html pages, just the e-mail addresses, etc. It stores the website to a directory of your choice on your computer. Now that you have the website on your hard drive, you can access it at any time. No need to be on the Internet! You get full access to the page right from your computer, that is, if you choose to download the whole page.
MemoWeb is made by GOTO Software. GOTO has been around for a while, since 1982, in fact, and has a couple of major divisions. MemoWeb is one of GOTO Software's major products.
Using MemoWeb
We're reviewing the 3.1 Pro version of MemoWeb today. There's also a free version of MemoWeb available that has a few ads splattered around your screen. It's really up to you if you wish to spend the extra $40 USD for the ads to disappear and for some free technical support, etc.
 MemoWeb is very easy and quick to use, which is its strong point. The installation is very fast and easy, mostly automated, like the majority of programs now--it's easy enough for anyone. When you first open up MemoWeb you are greeted with a nice, easy to use interface. One of the first things to do is read the tutorial. MemoWeb is very simple to use once you've read this tutorial, which explains everything you need to know in 4 easy steps. This is a major bonus! It's also got a more in-depth help section that you can read if you're not satisfied with the quick tutorial.
Once you've set up MemoWeb and read the quick tutorial, you can get started on building your collection of websites. All you have to do is click on New... and you can download your first website. MemoWeb has a couple of different options of what you can download from the website of your choice. You can download the complete site, which gives you EVERYTHING on it, including the outputs from CGI scripts and all. You can get the images of the whole site, a certain page or even a directory. You can also get the audio or compressed files from the whole site. The last 2 are just the html pages, which means you don't get the images or anything, just the actual page with the content, and all the e-mail addresses on the site. Each of these has advantages and disadvantages, which I will discuss later.
 Now that you've captured a website, you can do a fair amount with MemoWeb and your site. MemoWeb separates all your files into different sections, one for the html documents, one for the images, one for the files, one for the e-mail address and one last one for inactive links. Just by clicking on which one you want, you will get a list of all those types of files that you have downloaded. It's nice to have them all separated in lists so you can easily find what you're looking for. If you downloaded the entire site, you can now view it--no need to be connected to the Internet. All you have to do is click on Results at the top and you can view the wonderful page that you have downloaded. MemoWeb has a built-in browser so that you can view whichever page you want right from within MemoWeb. It does this through the browser of your choice, though. It's sort of weird, but if you try it, out you'll see what I mean.
MemoWeb also has a feature so you can automatically download pages that you want. You can set it up to download your favorite page at 1 AM, for example, so that you can view it nice and updated in the morning. This is a nice feature because then you always have the most recent version of the site on your hard drive.
 On to: Who Uses MemoWeb?
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