It's silly things like this that make you realise how bad Windows is.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I wanted to ZIP a 573MB ISO for emailing to a friend.

At first I used the file zip utility built-in to the Windows desktop and it only reduced the size by a couple of MB.

I then used 7zip and the file magically became 45MB.

What the fuck?

I know 7zip is better than ZIP but a compression ratio of 99% vs 7% is taking things a bit too far!

[davidnix71]

If you bust a string with 9-1 compression, the image is hosed. The early pc hd's used compression by default because you only had 5 or 10 MB real space. You could get 16-17 "MB" by compression, but you took a huge chance on losing everything if you did.

Same problem with having 1 key frame every 250 like some video codecs use. Lose a key frame and the picture will freeze for 10 seconds.

[Refalm]

The main focus of Microsoft was to support opening ZIP. Before Windows XP, you had to buy WinZIP, and this was a perfect opportunity to destroy the competition.
Never mind the compression rate is the same as the early WinZIP builds.

[Aloone_Jonez]

If you bust a string with 9-1 compression, the image is hosed. The early pc hd's used compression by default because you only had 5 or 10 MB real space. You could get 16-17 "MB" by compression, but you took a huge chance on losing everything if you did.

I remember using Drivespace to compress my 47MB hard drive to 90MB.

Then there was MagnaRAM, a 3rd party program for Windows which compressed memory rather than swapping to disc.

The trouble was that it put a lot of strain on the crappy 25MHz processor.

The main focus of Microsoft was to support opening ZIP. Before Windows XP, you had to buy WinZIP, and this was a perfect opportunity to destroy the competition.
Never mind the compression rate is the same as the early WinZIP builds.

I don't see why anyone wouldn't buy Winzip because XP does it so poorly and lacks most features present in Winzip, before XP most people I knew just used the shareware version and many still do.

[worker201]

Actually, the ability to deal with zipped files out of the box is incredibly useful.  The pervasiveness of zip is such that sometimes you need to unzip a file before you can install a 3rd party zipping application.  Anyone who needs real de/compression can get it easily.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I can see how it's useful to have zip support out of the box.

Come to think of it, that's one of the annoying things about Windows. When you install it, you have to download and install several other programs before you have a useful system.

Linux is better because, you just install the distribution and it's ready to use.

[Lead Head]

I will agree on that, although Windows 7 actually has many built in things now, like ISO burning support for one.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I have never used Windows 7 or Vista.

XP will probably be the last MS OS on my PC, although I can see myself using a newer MS OS at work.

When I buy a new PC, I'll install Linux and not use Windows, even if it comes with it pre-installed. I don't think I'll make much of an effort to buy a Windows-free PC because it might be handy for using Windows DLLs, fonts and enable me to legally download lots of stuff from the MS website to improve compatibility.