File Compression
By Stuart Bannerman
Nowadays, with so much storage space at our disposal, we tend not to notice how much room our work is taking up. We used to worry about it when all we had for storage was a floppy disk that held 1.44MB, but now that we have hard disks of 160GB and memory sticks of 2GB upwards, we are usually unaware of file sizes.
However, when we need to send files over the internet, size still matters.
You may have a 10Mbit/sec broadband connection, but the person you’re sending files to may only have a 56Kbit/sec dialup connection, and won’t thank you for tying up her line while she downloads your files.
Even if you’re sending files to business contacts with good broadband connections, their inbox capacity may be restricted, and a large file could well cause their system to seize up altogether, and bring down the wrath of their system administrator.
Some webmail providers impose a limit on the size of attachments. In the case of Yahoo the limit is 25MB
Fortunately, it is possible to compress many files, especially those that contain mainly text, so that they take up less space, without losing information.
Compressing or 'Zipping' files
Choose your targets
One simple way to compress a file or a group of files in Windows XP or later, is to select the file(s) in Windows Explorer. Now right click, and select Send To/Compressed (Zipped) Folder. A new zipped folder will be created that contains the selected file(s). [See above]
You can now send the zipped folder as an email attachment.
The amount of compression you will achieve depends on the nature of the original file. Files containing only text will compress most effectively. Some files, for instance, .jpg and .mp3 files, are already compressed, so will not benefit from this procedure.
Stuart Bannerman runs his own website, IT for Authors > here