PageSucker

What a cool name, that's about the only thing cool about it.

This is another one of those trick questions—linking students to an application that was last updated in July 2003 and only offering software that's obviously for an older operating system that's almost completely vanished. Why do they do this? I did not download this.

At first, I couldn't think why you would want to work offline, download speeds getting quicker and cheaper so there doesn't appear to be a reason to bother with this application. That's assuming all things being equal—your internet connection is working as it should be.
BUT then the thought struck me—what if your at work and you don't want your boss to know how much time your spending on the web and not working. You could download the sites without clocking up those hours on the server and read to your hearts content without the boss being any the wiser.

So it is cool after all!

But wait there's more.

The reason this has died
I keep reading the lifeblood of the web is the links, the fact that you can hop onto the web on one site and end up almost anywhere by following the links on the pages. PageSucker would then appear to have a very limited appeal, once the site is downloaded to your computer are the external links still active? I don't know, but if PageSucker needs to keep going out to the web to bring down more sites the whole thing seems pointless. And then there's the problem with filling up your hard disk space with offline web sites. I have a freind working in the Department of Health in Canberra and he said the government site had about 27,000 pages—downloading that site and reading offline might be a bit problematic.