what is compression software? why is it use? how do you use it?

Answer 1

Uses various math to take a file and cram it into less space. Since space used to be very expensive, compression was a great way to save. Mostly, it's used to make files smaller for transfer on the Internet (MP3 and MPG are both compression formats for music and movies).

You do YOU use it? You right click on an empty spot on your desktop or file manager, point to "New", and then "Compressed folder". Anything you put in that folder is automatically compressed.

This will slow down your access to those files a little, but it saves space (especially on word documents). Good for storing stuff you don't use often.

Answer 2

Compression software is used to reduce the size of a file so it can be transported and archived efficiently. Depending upon the file to be compressed and the efficiency of the file, compression ratios can range from 5:1 to 1.1:1 so you can see that compression can result in substantial file size reduction.

Let's assume you needed to back up a series of files that occupy 2 GB to another storage device off site. You wish to use the internet to do this and have a 384 Kbps upload speed (common for CATV and DSL). Without compression the transfer time would take about 12 hours to transfer (assuming that there was no other traffic using your connection). If your average compression ratio was 3:1, this would reduce the transmission to about 4 hours and to a storage volume at the other end of 0.667 GB.

To use compression you enact the compression software to make a compressed file.

To retrieve the file for use you decompress it.

A zip file is a typical compression software.

One problem - compressing an already compressed file will usually make it unable for use.