ZIP and RAR are two most popular archive formats on the Windows side of the planet. They are used to compress data like word documents and excel tables to take much less space.

This, in turn, is useful for generating efficient backups and sending one-year Microsoft financial reports by email.

People who are not very familiar with computers can understand the idea behind data compression rather easily. What I found almost impossible to explain to such people is why a file compressed by one archiver can be further compressed by another archiver.

Here is an idea how to illustrate the process of double compression.

(more…)

How would you answer this question without getting into technical details? How would you explain why do we need to format a hard drive before we can write data on it to a person who has just started using computers?

I’ve been trying to come up with a simple explanation for years! It only recently struck me that the formatting procedure can be easily illustrated.

(more…)