How many times have you been reading an online article in English only to discover that you don't know the exact definition to an important word? Or how many times have you been writing an essay in English only to find you don't have the exact word you are looking for to express yourself completely? If you have ever faced either of these situations, you should consider downloading the free dictionary, WordWeb. The purpose of this essay is to explain where to find WordWeb, how to download it, and how to set it up for everyday use.

The first step to downloading WordWeb is navigating to <http://download.cnet.com/WordWeb/3000-2279_4-10003201.html> which is where you will find the latest version, 6.8. On this page, you will see that over 9,000,000 people have downloaded WordWeb. The WordWeb download is about 19 MB, and has an approval rating of nearly five of five stars.

The second step to downloading WordWeb is clicking "Download Now." Then, a pop-up screen will prompt you for a destination for the file. Unless you already have a directory where you store all your downloaded files, I recommend saving the file, <wordweb6.exe>, to the desktop. On a phone line connection, this download may take a half-hour, but with a good connection on campus, it will take only a few minutes.

The third step to using WordWeb is setting it up. After the download completes, just find the <wordweb6.exe> file on your desktop and double-click it. You will have several options in the installation process. One important option is whether you want WordWeb to load into your system tray when you start your computer. I recommend that you answer "yes" to this option, so when you use WordWeb, the dictionary will appear instantly. Setting up WordWeb is easy. You should experiment with the variety of options until you get WordWeb configured exactly as you want.

In sum, WordWeb is an excellent dictionary. If you navigate to the download site, download the file, and install it exactly as I have described, you will have an excellent, free dictionary on your computer. This means that will never have problems again reading or writing in English because you do not know the definition of a word, an excellent reason to download WordWeb!

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