I decided to try out 7z, since it now has a plugin. So, I decided to perform a little test. I comressed my TC plugins dir, which is 16.0MB with ARJ, PKZip (using the internal PKZip) and 7z. PKZip and 7z were set to use maximum compression. There are no settings for ARJ (when used within TC) so I don't know what compression was used. Here are my results:
Clearly the winner (in this instance) is ARJ. What is the best compression engine? Or does it always simply depend on what you are compressing? In this case, it was mostly text files, .dll's and .exe's.
Robin L. Siebler
Personal License #13949
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"Bother", said Pooh, as he deleted Windows
ARJ for sure is the worst of them. i suppose your testfiles all were very small, that's the reason why ARJ was the best. the others have a bit more larger headers for each file.
as you see, there are many better packers around than RAR and 7z, but to be honest, they almost are useless. it takes ages to compress more than 10MB for most oh those.
The usefulness of a packer depends entirely on your needs. What types of files do you most often compress? Is speed an issue, or do you only want maximum compression? Is easy distribution necessary, or are you using the compression only for yourself? The answers to these questions and a few others will determine what the "best" compression tool is FOR YOU.
Personally, I tend to use the microsoftcabarc program when I need to compress things. It seems to fall in the middle of most categories. Perhaps its greatest appeal is the fact that any windows user can use it. On the occasion that I have something large (that needs to be compressed) to send to my grandmother, it's the only choice I've got. She doesn't have winrar or 7zip! She doesn't even know what compression is! But she can drag the files she needs out of the cabinet file I sent her.
Another point is the flexibility of the packer - i.e. wich options do you have.
That for I like ARJ as you can define very special options for packing (e.g include the whole path with drive letter, or make multivolume files without overspanning etc.)
sheepdog
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
Douglas Adams
TW
Thanks for the link, very useful!
What's interesting, the most "compressive" packer is WinRK, but I have never heard about it before... Unfortunately, this program is extremely unstable now. Also, creating archives with maximum compression level takes huge amount of time (for about 2 hours for 100 MB archive). So, maybe, it is really the best compressor, but I will prefer WinRAR to it
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Unfortunately ARJ is obsolete nowadays. (My impression: development is stopped in Y2K)
IMHO there are only 3 serious compression programs today:
7zip: you don't wanna pay some money and don't need sophisticated options (today the additional functions of 7zip are rudimentary)
WinRAR: you pay (not much) money and get an excellent program with sophisticated options
ZIP: for data interchange with other people
My 2 cents.
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. Benjamin Franklin
I've tried WinRK. Its compression rate is just a little bit better than 7z or Rar. The problem with WinRK is that it's extremely slow to compress files when using the highest compression modes. It can easily take almost one hour to compress 100mb, what 7zip and Winrar make in just one minute. It's a pity, but at this moment WinRK is simply unuseable.
The formats I use are:
I've tried WinRK. Its compression rate is just a little bit better than 7z or Rar.
The experimental PWCM algo should be industry-leading.
The problem with WinRK is that it's extremely slow to compress files when using the highest compression modes. It can easily take almost one hour to compress 100mb, what 7zip and Winrar make in just one minute.
It all depends on the settings and the hardware. I am just packing 3GB with WinRAR in solid mode, Normal compression, all other settings to best compression, should take cca. 2 hours on my Duron 1,1GHz. At Best compression setting the estimate was 3 hours.
Roman
Mal angenommen, du drückst Strg+F, wählst die FTP-Verbindung (mit gespeichertem Passwort), klickst aber nicht auf Verbinden, sondern fällst tot um.
of course it depends on the settings and also the hardware. but PWCM is slow as hell.
try to compress WinRK.exe. it took more than 5 minutes to get this done using PWCM, 256MB model size! winrar did the same in less than 3 seconds.
but then, the compression of winrk is just great
Can PWCM make sfx-archives? If yes I were interested in a link.
sheepdog
Last edited by Sheepdog on 2005-01-29, 22:10 UTC, edited 1 time in total.
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
Douglas Adams
Sure. But compresses as hell aswell, as you found out, too.
Roman
It's too sloooooooooow...
Compression is not the onle thing in compressors. You need also a good speed. If rar and 7z take much less time to do almost the same thing, why should I use this new unknow format. It's really too slow. If you compress 100mb, it's just a bit smaller than 7z and it takes almost one hour (7z takes one or two minutes).
