what program will yield the greatest compression percentages, is easy to use, takes up minimal harddrive space, and doesn't hog system resources when running? it'd be a bonus if it was 100% free, but a limited free version or a trial period version is fine too.

10/31/2006 4:37:12 PM

so you want realtime compression?

Turn on compressed files in windows, it's built in. Not going to get significantly better than that, and if you have mostly videos/mp3's/etc, it's not going to make hardly any difference, other than slowing your system down 5-10%.

10/31/2006 4:41:51 PM

7-zip from http://www.7-zip.org/

best compression
most compression options
fast decompression
free

10/31/2006 7:20:16 PM

Quote :

"takes up minimal harddrive space"

who cares about this these days?

and for these type of programs, you might be looking at 8MB of space vs 23MB of space. whats the difference?

10/31/2006 8:53:11 PM

7-Zip... hands down...

10/31/2006 9:14:47 PM

does 7-zip support multi-part creation? how fast is the initial compression?

10/31/2006 11:00:11 PM

7-zip allows you to split to volumes - 3.5", 650MB CD, 700MB CD, or 4.48G DVD

10/31/2006 11:39:50 PM

Quote :

"best compression most compression options fast decompression free"

Except for compressing pure ASCII text files, winrar has better compression.
Most compression options? What the hell does more options even do for you?
Winrar decompresses considerably faster, with far less memory usage
Nagware, but still usable for free

7-Zip is just another fad. WinRar is still the best file archiving option.

11/1/2006 2:03:15 AM

Quote :

"Winrar decompresses considerably faster, with far less memory usage"

Truth.

11/1/2006 9:52:27 AM

^^ 7-zip consistently beats out WinRAR in text compression, I just ran a test between WinZIP, WinRAR, and 7-zip on my machine here at work and 7z won by a landslide. Look it up yourselves, you people know how to use Google

it also allows you more control of compression settings, and shows you how much memory will be used to compress and decompress at those settings

7-zip is the clear winner for max compression, not to mention its free and not nagware

[Edited on November 1, 2006 at 10:08 AM. Reason : prove me wrong Noen]

11/1/2006 10:07:44 AM

Did you even READ my post?

Except for compressing pure ASCII text files, winrar has better compression.

7-Zip is better for ASCII files, WinRAR is better for anything binary.

Quote :

"it also allows you more control of compression settings, and shows you how much memory will be used to compress and decompress at those settings "

What is the point of all this "control of compression settings"? Once again you are talking about absolute miniscule differences. Having Fastest, Fast, Slow, Slower and Maximum pretty much covers the gamut.

Who the fuck cares if a compression program SHOWS you how much memory it's hogging? It still uses orders of magnitude more memory to compress AND decompress than WinRAR and it's SLOWER.

Also, WinRAR occasionally gives away previous versions for free.

[Edited on November 1, 2006 at 10:40 AM. Reason : .]

11/1/2006 10:40:02 AM

This may be nitpicky, but I refused to use 7-zip early on because of it's horrible GUI. Seriously it was like pulling teeth to navigate through that software. It may have gotten better since the last time I tried it, but I'll never find out.

11/1/2006 10:59:28 AM

^Yea its pretty terrible.

11/1/2006 11:05:55 AM

my bad, I misread your post Noen

according to http://www.maximumcompression.com/, it looks like WinRK 3.0.3 beats out everything

11/1/2006 11:09:11 AM

^sure, it beats out everything based on compression, but it's also proprietary. that aspect aside, however, what should really be looked at is efficiency, click for the list sorted as such:

http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/summary_mf2.php#data

notice that WinRAR is right there at the top, then compare the difference between it and 7-zip (and all the others). it's the reason why RAR files have been around so long, and are very popular with people who regularly compress files. WinACE tried to take the crown years ago just as 7-zip is trying today, but it will die out just like the others. the numbers on that chart speak the truth. good find, MiniMe_877

[Edited on November 1, 2006 at 11:59 AM. Reason : .]

11/1/2006 11:58:14 AM

Quote :

"Except for compressing pure ASCII text files, winrar has better compression. Most compression options? What the hell does more options even do for you? Winrar decompresses considerably faster, with far less memory usage Nagware, but still usable for free 7-Zip is just another fad. WinRar is still the best file archiving option."

11/1/2006 12:04:26 PM