2) Get a compression or archiving utility.

When you are offered freebies like software you will often find that they take up far too much disk space to run. It is like a form of adware that these companies rely on. Usually this happens because they add extra files to the software so that they can receive compensation for every download that they get.

A good example of this is when you find that you download some software and find that they have added search utilities to your browser that you didn’t want. It is real annoying but there is something that you can do about this.

Software providers usually offertheir own free programs in a compressed file format. If you are using Microsoft Windows for your computer, these files will usually have a .zip extension at the end of the file (i.e. mediaplayer.zip)

This format is used so as to reduce the amount of disk space they use and help speed up download times. If you're using Windows XP, then you're already set for decompressing files, and you would not need to download a separate utility.

Most popular compression utilities that you can find can handle various compressed formats, not just .zip extensions. Some of these file extensions are .rar or .tar.gz file, you should be fine. There are still many programs that don't require decompressing so you should realize that if you already have an archiving program installed yourcompression requirements should be fine.