Compressing EXE files

[Klaus Nordby]

Fellow 'puter users:

Did you know you can compress EXE files from almost any application so they are vastly smaller, often 30-40% of their original size - with NO adverse side effects???

Aside from the disk space savings, the EXE files will usually load faster due to smaller disk footprint. For instance, I've compressed the native Photoshop CS EXE file from its whopping 18 Mb original size down to 7.1 Mb! And it runs like a charm. Only a few programs will fail to work with compression, mostly older ones.

For such EXE compression I use a great - but tiny - shareware app called ASPack from www.aspack.com. They have a free 30 day trial, but after some testing I bought it right away for only 29 bucks.

K

[Klaus Nordby]

Fellow 'puter users:

Did you know you can compress EXE files from almost any application so they are vastly smaller, often 30-40% of their original size - with NO adverse side effects???

Aside from the disk space savings, the EXE files will usually load faster due to smaller disk footprint. For instance, I've compressed the native Photoshop CS EXE file from its whopping 18 Mb original size down to 7.1 Mb! And it runs like a charm. Only a few programs will fail to work with compression, mostly older ones.

For such EXE compression I use a great - but tiny - shareware app called ASPack from www.aspack.com. They have a free 30 day trial, but after some testing I bought it right away for only 29 bucks.

K

[BobInce]

Another widely-used and effective executable packer is UPX. It generally compresses about as well as ASPack (ASPack may be a nose ahead, but of course as with all compression benchmarks your mileage may vary), and is easily reversible back to uncompressed.

UPX is free from http://upx.sourceforge.net/