How to create and open the contents of a zip file

The steady increase in bandwidth over the last 10 years has brought about the ability to send larger and larger files. However, there are still limitations on most web based email systems which means that the smaller you can make a file the better. The quickest way of doing this on a Microsoft Windows based system is to compress the item to be transmitted using a 'zip file'.

Wikipedia and Austincc describe a zip file in the following way :

"The ZIP file format is a data compression and archival format. A ZIP file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce their file size, or stored as-is. A number of compression algorithms are permitted in zip files but as of 2008 only DEFLATE is widely used and supported".

and

"A file that has been compressed, or reduced in size, to save storage space and allow faster transferring across a network over the Internet. To read the information, the file must be uncompressed into its original form."

The creation of zip file is incredibly easy and can be achieved in the following way :

1. Find the file you wish to send/compress.
2. Right click it once to display the menu
3. Go to the 'Send to' option to expand the list
4. Choose the 'Compressed (zipped) folder' option
5. You will now see that a new folder has been created in the same directory with a zip showing on the icon. The file will have a .zip extension at the end of the name.

To decompress a zip file to read the contents, do the following :

1. Find the file you wish to read/open/decompress
2. Right click it once to display the menu
3. Select 'Extract all' to produce the 'Extraction Wizard'.
4. Click 'Next' and then 'Next' again to have your uncompressed folder appear in the same directory as the zip folder.
5. Click finish and your uncompressed folder will be opened up automatically for you to read the contents.

How to check the Codec of a video file

Occasionally, Windows Media Player (WMP) may be unable to play a video file because it will say that it does not have the correct Codec. These warnings are not particularly helpful because not only can you not play the file but WMP doesn't tell you what Codec you need.

The video files you are likely to have will have the file extension of .avi, .mpg etc and the most simple way to find out what Codec you need is to do the following :

1. Go to the video file.
2. Right click the file to display the menu and go to 'Properties'.
3. Go to the 'Summary' tab
4. Click the advanced button (If the only button there says '<< Simple' then the Advanced button has already been clicked.
5. You should now be able to see Image, Audio and Video properties.
6. For the necessary Codec you will need to look at 'Video compression'. In my example, it was showing 'XVID'.
7. It's this video compression name that you would use on Google or Yahoo to find the correct Codec to download..