2007-07-07 11:54:03 · 13 answers · asked by Christine Iero 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Programming & Design
It compresses them a bit, which makes the files smaller and faster to send.
It also enables you to send one file, instead of attaching 1 at a time to an email.
2007-07-07 11:56:50 · answer #1 · answered by EEJ 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, if you have limited space, you can reserve a prtion of the disk for only one uncompressed file at a time, and then zip and unzip when you need to alter which file is accessible, to save some space.
Maybe that's not so clear- I'll try to give an example:
I have say, 100MB hard drive space for my documents. But uncompressed they take up 200 MB. Say those documents are each 50MB uncompressed- there's four, and my other three documents, compressed, take up 30MB.
I can have file A uncompressed, and keep files B through D on my machine- but I'm only using up, in this exmaple, 80MB. When I want to alter this, I can...
compress file A, so that's 37.5 MB used, by my working...
decompress file B, so I've 50 MB used by file B and 30 MB used by my other three files.
These numbers are taken straight from my head, but you can see what I mean. As a final note, it also makes them easier to fit onto portable media (floppies or zip drives, which have quite limited capacities), or to send by email.
2007-07-07 12:02:16 · answer #2 · answered by Jim 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are really two reasons to zip files. Zipping files often allows you to compress certain files and make them up to 90% smaller, allowing you to save room on your hard drive or transfer the files over the internet. If you're not looking to compress files, zipping a lot of files allows you to organize your computer and gives you the ability to encrypt or password your data.
2007-07-07 11:58:45 · answer #3 · answered by alexodroid 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Zipping is used for two reasons
1) to reduce the size of the file or files
2) to embed multiple files into a single file archive
2007-07-07 11:56:57 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Well....
The point is zipping files makes them smaller on your hard drive, they take up less space. It also helps to put groups of related files in one place, an archive, so that it makes managing them easier. It also helps in file transfer, a smaller file takes less time to copy or send over the internet, or a network, or whenever one has to transfer them.
That is about as simple as I can be to describe it.
Hope that helps.
2007-07-07 11:58:49 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Zipping files is called also called file compression.
This allows the file to shrink from it's orginal size and save space. When you need to use again you simply uncompress it and it will return back to it's orginal size.
Here is a great down to earth article for those who are not tech savwy. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/file-compression.htm
Note* There are many different file compression formats. Sometimes one is better then the other, .zip, .ace, .rar, and .gz are examples of other types of file compression formats.
2007-07-07 11:57:47 · answer #6 · answered by jack 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
To compress them and send them as an email attachments or to download them from a website.
It is obviously faster to download a small compressed file than a huge uncompressed file.
2007-07-07 11:58:37 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can add multiple files to one container and encrypt it with a password if you desire. It also compresses the files for easy transfer.
2007-07-07 11:59:48 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
To have more free space on your hard disc or if you want to send the files with email etc you will be able to send them faster.
2007-07-07 12:01:54 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Besides compressing the files, you can also password
protect the archive.
2007-07-07 11:59:41 · answer #10 · answered by Karl 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋