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Compressing files

For a while, compressing files on disk was really popular, so popular that Microsoft built it into every operating system since MS-DOS 6.2. Basically, CPU time had outpaced disk size, so spending the time amount of time when loading the file was worth it. But it's not anymore...or is it?
 

While disk space is incredibly cheap, don't discount compression out of hand, especially considing how fast CPUs are now. For fun, let's compress one thing. Bring up Windows Explorer, and navigate to C:\Program Files\Outlook Express. Right click on the folder in the tree, and choose 'Properties'. On my computer, it says '4.14 MB' for the 'Size on Disk'. Click 'Advanced...', and choose 'Compress contents' and 'OK'. Then click 'Apply', and tell it to apply the changes to all subfolders and files too. Wait a second.

Now it says 2.44 MB. We just magically got 1.7 megs, with only a very very slight slowdown in the startup time of Outlook Express. If you don't use OE, it's definitely worth it, and probably worth it if you do.

Of course, OE is a very small program, but do you have, for example, an installation of Microsoft Office that you use maybe once a month? Or a street atlas? Compress them. It doesn't ever seem like very much, but if you, every once in a while, compress programs you don't use that much, but that you don't want to uninstall, you'll wind up with about 25% less space used by installed programs, and never notice any diffence in speed. Compressed files show up in a different color by default. That's controlled under 'Tools/Folder Options.../View', near the bottom of the list if you want to turn it off.

A word of warning: videos, mp3s, images, install programs, and some other stuff tends to already be compressed, and you can't compress them any further. Always check that you got some space advantage out of the compression...if you didn't, just undo it.
 







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