We live in the information age. Wikipedia is a great source of information about any possible subject in the world. Even though it is not always unbiased, I use it very often to gather information that I find useful. If you prefer not to use Wikipedia while surfing online, you can always download it to your computer, and access it any time, even if your browser is closed. This can be easily achieved by having a program like WikiTaxi installed. This particular application is free and it is available for Windows. You can download it from their website as well as from many other mirrors. WikiTaxi’s solution is also perfect for those who have dial-up connection or for those who are on holidays with their laptop, and the only place where they can have easy access to the Internet is the local Internet café. I think that there are many benefits of having resources like Wikipedia downloaded on your hard drive. Of course, it might be a lot better in your case to simply access Wikipedia by going online and not to fill your hard drive with such a large encyclopedia. Many people also prefer not to download a lot of data, as they prefer to keep their computer free from unnecessary downloads. Whatever you plan to do, it is totally up to you. Either way, I believe that using sites like Wikipedia is beneficial in most cases. Some of the information represented on such sites might not be accurate, but the information gets updated very fast. No traditional encyclopedias can compete with that.