If I Had a PKZip, I’d PK in the Morning . . .
Just about everyone who drives a car has a spare tire and a handful of other essential tools. You might not need them very often, but it’s nice to know they’re there.
PC users also need tool kits for those “just in case” situations. Generally, some of them come with new PCs. Windows and Windows 95, for example, come with ScanDisk, a utility program that looks for damaged files. Windows 95 also has Disk Defragmentor, an important utility that speeds up access to your hard disk by putting all your data into a contiguous area of the disk.
Compression software is another essential tool, but it doesn’t come with most PCs. Fortunately, it’s easy to come by. PKZip and WinZip are shareware programs you can download, for free, from the Internet. If you like either one, you are encouraged to register it by paying a fee to the publisher. PKZip is $49 and WinZip is $29. (Shareware works on the honor system; the programs will continue to work even for those who don’t pay up.)
These programs compress and decompress files. You might need such a program to decompress files you download from the Internet, and you might want it to compress some of your own files to save storage space or to make them smaller.
Most programs you download over the Internet are compressed because the smaller the file, the faster it can be downloaded. Some of these programs are “self-extracting,” meaning they have the decompression software built in. But that’s not always the case. A lot of programs you download have been compressed into “zip” files, and the only way to use them is to decompress them with a zip-compatible decompression program.
PKWare (https://www.pkware.com) is the leading supplier of compression software. Its newest Windows version, PKZip 2.50, handles compression and decompression in an easy-to-use graphical interface. The program, on average, reduces file sizes by about half, but some types of files, including some database and graphic files, can be reduced by 90% or more.
You can download a free 661-kilobyte trial copy of PKZip from the company’s Web site. After it’s downloaded, just double click on the file and it will install itself. Decompressing a zip file is extremely straightforward. Just double click on it in the Windows 95 Explorer and the rest is automatic.
WinZip, from Nico Mak Computing (https://www.winzip.com), is a competing program that, like PKZip, integrates itself with the Windows 95 Explorer to make it easy to use. Both programs can also be used to break up compressed files into smaller chunks, which can be stored on multiple floppy disks, even if the files would otherwise be too large to fit on a floppy. WinZip and PKZip are compatible, as well as files compressed by the DOS versions of PKZip.
I use these compression programs to store files that I don’t use very often. For example, I have about 20 megabytes of family photographs that I occasionally use in greeting cards and other documents. But rather than tie up precious disk space, I compress them into about 4 megabytes. When I need a file, I use the same program to decompress it. It works every time, and I haven’t lost a single pixel of my photos.
I also use the program to compress and password-protect my Quicken financial records into a single, small file. Once the file has been reduced in size, I e-mail it to a friend for safekeeping so I have an off-premise copy of my records. Both programs allow you to assign a password to the compressed file so that others can’t decompress or view the data.
Stuffit Deluxe from Aladdin Systems is the most popular Macintosh compression program. The commercial version can be used to both compress and decompress. Stuffit Expander, a free program you can download from Aladdin’s Web site (https://www.aladdinsys.com/) allows you to decompress “stuffed” files.
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Lawrence J. Magid can be reached by e-mail at magid@latimes.com. His World Wide Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com
