In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Bob Brown said:
I've been using winrar for a while and was wondering what is
considered the best one as far as compression?
I'm wanting to make the compressed files as Tiny as possible.
Well, the nice thing about winrar is that it supports just about all
standard compression modes around.
As to which standard is best: That depends entirely on the file-type.
The old PK-ZIP program used to do different compressions for different
file types, even sometimes doing no compression at all for certain types
of close-to-random or already compressed data.
Does it exist? Is their a comparison chart for different compression
programs? I checked google and cannot find such a chart ot suggestion
The best way is to check it with *your* data.
No one compression method is "best" for all types.
I have a personal compression-method (intended to replace Yencoding over
the net) that can give several thousand percent compression for very
simple types of data over PK-ZIP. OTOH, ZIP beats that compression
method all hollow for most files. funny though: Compressing a ZIP file
with my encoder *sometimes* results in a smaller file than either one
creates ... but never creates a bigger file, as it checks for that case,
and if so sends the data raw (like PK-ZIP used to do).
All-in-all, my general impression (admittedly from over a decade ago) is
that ZIP is the best all-around compression format, but for specific
types of data there's almost always another format that's better.
Like I said though (and the reason I personally use winrar rather than
winzip, as both are produced by the same people) is that it supports
more formats than any other program I know.
please help if you can, thanks.
http://www.winrar.com/
Or
http://www.win-rar.com/download.html
(You'll notice they also supply winzip as well ... Though why anybody
would get THAT, when winrar does all the same things and more ....)
