The article talks about what programs there are for compressing files, what are their capabilities, and why are they needed at all.
The Beginning of the Digital Age
Nowadays, you will not surprise anyone with powerful computers, smartphones and tablets, but some 15 years ago not all could afford home PCs, and even simple mobile phones were not as widespread as they are now. Perhaps digital technology is the industry that is developing most rapidly. Every year new developments, standards and opportunities appear. This is especially facilitated by the Internet, through which now almost everything can be done.
But at the beginning of the general computerization of unlimited high-speed Internet, there simply wasn’t any, and the existing communication channels were distinguished by a slow transmission and unreliable connection. Removable storage media also could not boast of a large capacity and were very expensive. This is what prompted the development of such software as programs for compressing files.
They were used by everyone who wanted to save traffic, speed up file transfer, or simply put more text or other information on a floppy disk. Later they became in demand in various organizations, when they completely switched to electronic document management. So what are file compression programs? This we will understand.
Archivers
Such software is often called archivers, because, in addition to compression and reduction in size, files are added to a single directory. But first things first.
As the name implies, such programs serve to compress files and reduce their size. This is especially convenient when you need to store large information on a removable or other computer storage medium and make it take up as little space as possible. Or transfer data over the Internet in those conditions when the connection is slow, often disconnects or just very expensive. Of course, in our time the Internet is almost everywhere, but in hard-to-reach places it remains at the level of the beginning of this century, that is, slow and expensive. It is in such cases that programs for compressing files come to the rescue.
Convenience
In addition to reducing the size, such programs serve another purpose - this is the union of many files into one archive. For example, you need to transfer or place somewhere a hundred files. Even if everyone has a small size, then downloading or recording them sequentially is not very convenient. Especially when they are all interconnected, and the loss of one or more will make the rest unworkable. In this case, the program for compressing files will create an archive from them, that is, a new “file”, which will contain all the others.
Format
It is also worth noting that you can open the archive only by the archiver, who made the packaging, or third-party, if it supports the common formats of other similar programs. Often, they actually support each other, since they work on similar algorithms, and usually there are no problems with this. But in any case, a file compression program is an important part of software in any operating system. There are many varieties, but two are most popular. We will consider them in more detail.
7-zip
The first is 7-Zip, which exists for both Windows and Linux operating systems. It is distributed free of charge and is one of the oldest and most popular. It is constantly updated, and developers add new functionality and improve the existing one. You can download it on the official website. And if you need a program for compressing pdf files, then it is suitable for this purpose very well.
Winrar
The second of the most popular is WinRAR. It allows you to archive and compress files, split them into several parts. The program has a lot of settings for any tasks. Also, using it, you can open archives of other programs. However, 7-Zip also copes with this task. It is distributed free of charge, if we talk about private, home use. And if there was a need for such a thing as a program for compressing PDF files, then WinRAR copes with this task remarkably.
So we sorted out the most popular archiver programs.