>>On another completely unrelated note, can someone tell me what a "Zip-file" is. I assume this has nothing to do with a Zip drive or disk (because the Zip file lacks the trademark). Is there any relationship between the two "zips" at all? If not, why isn't there some name infringement?<<
Jim -
A long time ago, way back in the 80's, when modems were VERY slow and the only removable storage was floppy disks, a program named PKZip was written. It became quite popular, and is still in use today in several forms.
PKZip was, and is, a program which compresses a file so that it takes up much less space. The compressed file is referred to as a Zip file, because it has a filename extension of ".zip". You can also compress multiple files, even entire directories and sub-directories, into one Zip file.
When you want to access the files again, you "Unzip" them. In the old days we did that with PKUnzip. Today, both zipping and unzipping of files are done with WinZip. You can even get OS-level support for Zipped files in the Windows 98 Plus Pack.
All of this relates only to DOS and Windows computers.
So the name "Zip file" predates the Zip drive.
That was more than you needed to know, wasn't it?
- Allen |
