One laptop can be the school library
Where the internet is missing, slow or costs too much, World Without Web puts Wikipedia, textbooks, story books and a medical encyclopedia on one computer. It needs no signal, and it keeps working if you never renew.
Get the download $49.50 a year, half price during Early Access. Nothing charges on its own.
What a classroom gets
It all sits on the laptop. Nothing here needs a connection once it's loaded.
Wikipedia, with its pictures
Wikipedia in English, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and OpenStax textbooks in biology, chemistry, physics, anatomy, algebra, statistics and economics.
Type a few words and one search looks through every book on board.
Lessons and story books for young readers
The Learn tab opens straight to the lessons with no sign-in. It has picture books from Book Dash, African Storybook and StoryWeaver, and PhET science and math simulations a child can play with.
Khan Academy and CK-12 are free add-ons. One click downloads them from their own makers.
A reference shelf for the clinic
WikiMed holds Wikipedia's medical articles. FDA labels for 103,202 medicines give the dosage, warnings and interactions as the maker filed them. CDC Travelers' Health and the Army's first aid manual are there too.
It's reference text, not advice, and the labels are for medicines sold in the US.
How it fits a school
| A room of readers | On Linux Mint, the laptop makes its own small Wi-Fi network with no internet. Phones and tablets nearby join it and read the library and the maps in their web browser. On Windows, phones and tablets on the same Wi-Fi do the same. |
|---|---|
| Old and donated laptops | It installs on Linux Mint, a free system that runs well on older computers. Our Make a Linux USB program gets you there. |
| No monthly bill | One payment buys the download and a year of updates. It keeps working as installed if you never renew. |
| Slow or costly internet | It needs the internet once, for about 220 GB. Load it in town, then turn updates off with one switch. |
| Power | A battery and solar calculator tells you how long a battery will run what you plug in. |
| A locked folder | Important Papers keeps copies of documents encrypted with a passphrase, and its USB backup is locked too. |
| Village know-how | Appropedia's guides to clean water, sanitation and low-tech builds, classic farming books, and repair answers for bicycles, cars, electronics and homes. |
| No AI, if you'd rather | The no-AI download has no AI in its installer, and its updates never add one. |
Before you buy
- Today we take orders from buyers in the US who are 18 or older. Buying for a school or a clinic in another country? Write to us first about a group order. Then buy and load the computer here and carry it there, under our terms of sale and the export rule below.
- It includes encryption, so US export law applies: it can't go to a country or a person the US government restricts. Our terms of sale have the wording.
- The library is in English.
- It needs Windows 10 or 11, or Linux Mint, with 8 GB of memory. A Mac version is coming soon.
- The medical shelf is for looking things up. It doesn't replace a doctor or a nurse.
- The app has no account and sends nothing about you.
Get World Without Web
Both downloads are for Windows or Linux Mint. You pay for a year at a time, and nothing ever charges on its own.
Early Access: both downloads are half price through December 3. From December 4 they're $99 and $49.99 a year.
The download, with Wilson
The library, the maps, the tools and Wilson, the AI. You get a year of updates, and it keeps working as installed if you don't renew.
$49.50a year
Order the downloadThe download with no AI
The same library, maps and tools from an installer that has no AI in it. Wilson, voice and the translator are left out, and its updates never add them.
$24.99a year
Order it with no AIOne order covers the computers your own household owns. Loading laptops for a school, a clinic or a program? Write to support@worldwithoutweb.com and tell us how many computers.
If it won't run on your computer and we can't fix it together, you get a full refund within 30 days. See how it compares.