Those incredible shrinking files: compressing your files can save time and hard drive space

Black Enterprise, Jan, 1998 by Tariq K. Muhammad

Do you ever download large files from the Internet or send them to friends and colleagues? If so, an archive file manager may shave precious minutes from the interminable amount of time it takes to move files from one system to another--especially via the Internet.

Quarterdeck's Zip-It 4.0 lets you reduce the size of files by more than 50%, cutting transfer time and making large files easier to handle. Like other archiving utilities, Zip-It compresses files by analyzing and reconfiguring the data using as little information as possible. This smaller reconfigured file, commonly expressed with a ZIP extension, also contains instructions for recreating the compressed data once it has been transferred to the desired computer.

Zip-It is more feature-rich than other archiving utilities such as PKZIP and PKUNZIP, the popular shareware programs (available freely on the Web at www.download.com) that are the de facto standard for compressing and extracting files on a PC. In addition to the usual archiving components, Zip-It contains a host of extras, including plug-ins for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers, which allow you to view and extract zipped files while surfing the Net. The program lets you compress or extract files with a single click, or by dragging the file to the Zip-It icon on the desktop. You can also view the contents of archived files before extracting them, giving you the option of unzipping only the files you need.

Another useful feature is the software's ability tO create self-extracting ZIP files. A self-extracting ZIP file can be opened by anyone--whether they have a ZIP utility or not--just by double clicking on it. It allows people without an archiving utility tO benefit from I your foresight. Zip-It can even be used as a last resort backup tool. If you don't have backup hardware, just compress your important files and save them on a floppy disk. Price: $39.95. Available for Windows 3.x/95/NT4.0

Visit Quarterdeck's Web site at www.quarterdeck.com.