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ACE vs ZIP


Question

Can anyone explain me why we all still use ZIP when much much better compression is available with ACE or RAR???

Just recently I dowloaded a 95mb ZIP file in 50min ,

once downloaded I optimized (extract and compress) it to ACE format which resulted in a 70mb ACE file, thats a huge diffrence

I even noticed that sometimes the ACE files are only 40% in size than the ZIP format , so why do we use ZIP????

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I think zip is way too common method of compression for compressing into smaller file. While I found zip is much more usable, I guess that zip is the way to go! RAR is not bad too!

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Maybe ZIP is common but common doesn't mean good

notice the huge diffrence in file size

this goes not only for downloading but also for file servers which can save huge amounts of storage

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Originally posted by Beast_4thHM

Maybe ZIP is common but common doesn't mean good

I'm afraid it means it's a standard though. When a company like Microsoft integrate it into it's OS, it becomes a standard.

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Bottom line I would guess is that the ZIP format is ubiquitous.. hence ensuring that the downloader doesn't need to go get .. say WinRAR or WinACE just to decompress the file...

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Actually I think bzip2 is on average the most effective compression. However, can you see the world switching from Zip? Daybreak is right, everyone uses zip so everyone will use zip...

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Originally posted by Dazzla

I'm afraid it means it's a standard though. When a company like Microsoft integrate it into it's OS, it becomes a standard.

then internet explorer is the best standart compilant browser :D

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Possibly another reason, and the more important one I think, is the fact that the .RAR and .ACE formats are proprietary.. decompression is free, but the compression algorithims need to be licensed...

Which is also why you also see a whole host of .ZIP archivers/unarchivers but only WinRAR and WinACE can make RAR and ACE files respectively...

Zip on the other hand .. well there's Infozip, Zlib and Gzip

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Originally posted by [saint dark]then internet explorer is the best standart compilant browser :D

No, IE is the standard, just like ZIP is the standard.

Nobody said anything about standards compliance. :p

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While I think about it...

Its either ACE or RAR that use lossy compression. I think its ACE, which means you would get very coog compression on some files such as BMP where it will store them like JPG: you what you extract isn't exactly what you put in. With ZIP and RAR the compression algorithms are losless.

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Originally posted by Daybreak

Possibly another reason, and the more important one I think, is the fact that the .RAR and .ACE formats are proprietary.. decompression is free, but the compression algorithims need to be licensed...

Which is also why you also see a whole host of .ZIP archivers/unarchivers but only WinRAR and WinACE can make RAR and ACE files respectively...

Zip on the other hand .. well there's Infozip, Zlib and Gzip

Perhaps the biggest reason ;)

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Both WinRAR and WinACE get better compression generally by removing CRC checking, if a Zip file is corrupt you can recover most files from the archive except the corrupt one, where as the whole file is lost with WinRAR and WinACE, when using non solid archives.

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Originally posted by CustardFD

While I think about it...

Its either ACE or RAR that use lossy compression. I think its ACE, which means you would get very coog compression on some files such as BMP where it will store them like JPG: you what you extract isn't exactly what you put in. With ZIP and RAR the compression algorithms are losless.

*clears his throat*

MWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA

*takes a deep breath*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

ah, feel much better now.

you must be clinicly insane if you say that either of those programs uses lossy compression.

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Lossy compression LOL!!! woops! i just fell outa my chair!!!

Why would anyone compress data if u couldnt reconstruct it again exactly. Wot happens is that some compression algorithms look for specific strings of characters and replace that string with a smaller one (hence compression). The decompression then removes the shorter string and replaces it with the original.

This isnt wot happens for all compression techniques but i fink most use this principle.

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Originally posted by drewster2100

it has good compatibility with other compression formats

winrar 2.9 had some problems with extracting multi-volume ace files, dunno about 3

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hmmm lets see what we have now:

1. ACE has good compression but no CRC checking (???)

2. RAR has good compression and fast

3. ZIP is just common and fast

I gonna make a compression test now.

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Originally posted by MxxCon

you must be clinicly insane if you say that either of those programs uses lossy compression.

There is one. I thought it was ACE. Ah well...

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Lol.. in case you didn't know Lzip is a ... satire...

It utilizes a two-pass bit-sieve to first remove all unimportant data from the data set. Lzip implements this quiet effectively by eliminating all of the 0's.   ...  

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