There are numerous different ways to save things, and there are advantages and disadvantages to each of them.
Save as html:
When you save as html, you get a file and a "same-named" folder with any bits of stuff linked internally to the file. This thread, as an example, saved a couple of posts ago as a 55 KB file and a folder containing 3 smaller files, 2, 2, and 10 KB. Total size of the four files was 76.2 KB, but since there are 4 separate files involved, each potentially with an average 1 KB "cluster loss" they may have used anything from 78 KB to 92 KB on the disk.
You can move "saved pages" around for sorting and classifying if you keep the file and its associated folder together. You cannot change the name of either of them, except by opening them in your browser and doing a "save as" with the new name, then going back and deleting the old ones.
Send as email:
The same version of this thread sent to my self came back as an 86 KB email message. In Outlook Express it looks exactly like the original page. Since email is automatically in a database format, there is no significant "cluster loss," making this a fairly compact method of saving.
The main problem with saving in your email folder(s) is that you can only backup and recover entire email folders. If you back up, and don't delete, a restore of the backup gives you two copies of everything. Some email providers also have low limits on how much you can leave on the site, as well, and to get the email into a local folder on your own machine takes some juggling.
Save as individual eml files:
Not all email programs permit it, but OE lets you save an individual email message as an "email file," (.eml). The above 86 KB message saved as 87 KB in a separate .eml. An individual message should open in OE so it looks just like a new message, complete with all links and attachments. The .eml files produced by OE apparently only open in OE, but once open they can be "moved to" a folder in your regular email setup for reading in another email program or in your web browser.
Copy and paste into your word processor:
A straight copy and paste into a Word document produced a 182 KB .doc file. Links are preserved, but it's pretty messy.
Pasted into a Word document as formatted text gives a 201 KB .doc file, but preserves links (and the same other messy stuff). Surprisingly perhaps, saving the "formatted paste" as a formatted text (.rtf) file gets you 291 KB, 50% larger than the Word file.
The above version of this page pasted into a Word document as unformatted text produced a 55 KB .doc file. Text pastes cleanly and compactly, and most of the mess is eliminated. Saving the "paste-unformatted" as a plain text (.txt) file reduces the size to 20 KB. Links, of course, are not preserved in unformatted plain text.
For the most compact save of the text on a page, copy and paste as unformatted text into Notepad or Word, and save as .txt. If there are a few links you want to save, you can right click them and "copy shortcut," then paste the shortcut (url) into the .txt document.
If you want the "whole thing" as the web page, or want to save a lot of links with the page, either a save as html or sending yourself an email of the page should work well, depending on whether you'd rather work html file/folder pairs or work with email messages. The impact on the web site should not be significantly different for either of these two methods, since once it's "loaded" it's on your machine and doesn't require site action. (Note that on complex web pages, some links may be preserved but won't work, since they may point to local pages that have to be executed from the actual web site/page. That's not usually a problem at the 'cat.)
Emailing a link to a page should be a very efficient way of referring someone to a page, but the site must be up and the recipient must be able to connect to it when they click the link for it work. Because of the ease with which an "attachment link" can be faked for malicious purposes - and the frequency with which it's done - I probably wouldn't open the attachment. I'd much prefer to receive an email with the url copied from the address bar and pasted - in plain text - in the body of the message. I'd think a brief comment on what's there and why it was sent to me would be in order as well, as otherwise I'll delete without reading.