I was thinking this too, but here is my theory -

I bet that they can look up information and such that was downloaded from Ask.com, but my guess is that they don't have live internet capabilities anywhere they go. They would have to carry around a wireless thingy in their backpack, I think or something. Maybe i'm just not very computer savy - but that is my theory.

My guess is that everything that they need for the game is already loaded offline style on their laptops so they dont need live access to the web but I could be completely wrong. It never says implicitly that they only have access to ask.com but if they did, it would make sense as they wouldn't be able to access any other resource but would be sure to have everything they might need for the game.

Yep, that is what I meant, but you said it soo much better.

Assuming that they can only access ASK.com - I checked.

ASK.com also has a map service, they could have looked it up themselves. Also considering how much they are roaming I am sure that the show insured hot spots at each task location if not a wide (sat link?) area service. Suggests to me they need to do look-ups before jumping into a car and driving off.

In fact I can see that as part of the game, do you wait a few minutes and access ASK.com or jump into the car and maybe lose your connection to look up info.

I understand your point and think maybe you misunderstood mine. I too believe either they were set up to ensure there would be wi-fi spots wherever the tasks were but my alternative belief was that maybe all the information they needed was already looaded into the machines via the ask.com engine. That may not be entirely feasible but if the sole purpose of the laptops was to help with clues and directions, they would have plenty of harddrive space for the producers to have loaded everything before they left for the first task.

The producers already know what the clues are and the places that they will travel so it doesn't seem to hard to pre-load the laptops with the offline information they would have needed for the whole show. Does that make sense or am I grasping at straws??

Anyone, Bueller??

Friendship is like peeing your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth

The only problem (not saying you can't do it. Is that at present most search engines run on large clusters to process the questions. If you just use a browser offline functions then the players must use the 'EXACT' same question as the producers did.

However, I just checked. Ask.com does have a PC computer based search engine. According to the FAQ all the index files are kept on the PC - no internet required. It uses the browser as it's interface so I assume it looks the same too!

So yes, you are right! The producers if they want too could have the computers pre-load for off-line use with all the key info. Additionally, since they all come to the same stops at the end of each leg, there is a chance for the computers to be updated for the next leg only, thus preventing someone to spend time working on a clue three legs in advance. (ie, looking at the maps loaded to guess where they are going.)

Thanks for doing the research that I am way too lazy to do myself. The offline engine makes the most sense for exactly the reasons you specified in your post.

Friendship is like peeing your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth

Didn't Air Force use the directions on Ask.com- I seem to remember they had their computer open and one of the Matt's was reading directions.

I would have searched Ask.com for Google!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hehe. me, too.

Google is the best.thing.ever.