MetaProducts Inquiry Professional Edition

MetaProducts Inquiry Professional Edition offers just the right tools for online researchers. And we give it a thumbs-up for its ability to run as an add-on incorporated with Internet Explorer or as a standalone browser.

As a standalone, it offers an uncluttered, user-friendly interface with a number of buttons in its toolbar; a vertical directory-tree style pane on the left of its window; and a larger browser pane on the right. The included tutorial clears up any mysteries a user might have for its use. The IE-embedded version functions within the larger frame of IE with its array of toolbars and features, so users who prefer IE's options for working on projects won't have to do without them.

The tool performed quickly and very satisfactorily during our tests. We were able to navigate to a number of sites and quickly save them to our hard drive. We were doubly pleased that we could save a page with the choice of whether to include its graphics just by dragging its hyperlink from a page to the appropriate folder in the vertical directory-tree pane. The app includes options for viewing a saved pages source code and its URLs, for saving it as a thumbnail graphic, and for editing its content--all very useful when developing a report or other sort of presentation from saved pages.

While MetaProducts Inquiry Professional Edition is easy to use and offers a robust feature set, its post-trial price might be a bit steep for most users. However, if you perform a lot of research online, this tool for capturing and editing pages will be very handy as you work on projects.