A Smartass Education

You know what a zip file is right? They are great for storing data in 1 little file that you can download online. Well .zip was great 10 years ago, but it’s compression has never really improved. So we need something that can compress data better. In the ago of big-ass hard drives this seems like a trivial thing, however it’s not because the place you are getting these files is the internet. You want your files to download super fast and I want to use less space, and transfer less data from my server.

This is where .7z files come in. They started with a program called 7-Zip, there are many other programs that support .7z noww though because these little badboys can compress the hell out of things. It is my format of choice for compression. Though sadly is not known world wide, so I have stuck to using zip files where possible. Well at this point I want to host things on my server again, and I am low on space, so I am going to be using Bittorrent and 7-Zip files a lot.

Ok, so it compresses a lot right, well you don’t care, you don’t want to have to download another archival program right? I didn’t either, but I caved in and now this is the only one I use, because not only does it support .7z and .zip but it can extract just about anything .rar’s .msi files (microsoft installation’s), ISO’s, tar, deb etc.. The list goes on.

Lastly it’s FREE. I mean WinRAR now supports most of the same files as 7-Zip, however WinRAR is not free.

This is why I use 7-Zip and this is what I will be compressing files in that are on this website, so now you can’t come bitchin’ at me that you can’t use the weird .7z files on this site.

Download 7-Zip
Wikipedia Entry

Article Author: The Smartass
Source: Brain Power
Last Updated: 2.22.07