Why don't you Stuff It?

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Sorry, sorry lol. Does anyone here regularly use Stuff It Deluxe 2010? I bought it, but it looks like it only offers three types of compression: plain old zip, StuffIt proprietary, and StuffIt X proprietary. I was hoping to be able to make .rar, or have more control over how much I want to compress stuff. Am I missing something, or did I waste my money? Is there any other Mac compression program that offers lots of solutions? Thanks!
 

pigoo3

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Am I missing something, or did I waste my money?

Honestly...I vote for "you wasted your money".;)

I'm not saying this to be mean...but years ago (10-12+ years) compression programs like Stuffit were very popular because hard drive prices were very high...and optical drives like CD or DVD burners either didn't exist or were very expensive.

So back then full hard drives were a problem (so compression software came in handy)...and compression software also helped with reducing the size of backups.

Today...with hard drives being much much less expensive (and much larger)...and CD/DVD burners & media being very very inexpensive...compression software just isn't as beneficial or necessary as it once was.

Of course you may have some special circumstances or needs that I may not be thinking about where compression software may still come in handy.

Just my 2 cents;),

- Nick

p.s. By the way...I still have a bunch of backup floppy discs & MO discs from YEARS ago that I used a program called "Disk Doubler" to compress.:)
 

cwa107


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StuffIt is pretty weak in my opinion, especially for the price. I tried it, Zipeg (which is free) and BetterZip. Liked the latter the best. Good price, allows you to preview an archive's contents before extracting (much like WinZip) and supports a whole lot of different compression types.
 

bobtomay

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I haven't used any compression software except for unpacking since my first 120GB drive about 6-7 yrs ago.
 

pigoo3

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I do realize that a lot of internet downloads use some sort of compression...but for the average user...with high speed internet, compression software isn't really as important as it once was.

Now if someone was uploading a lot of files & was using a 56k modem...then compression software might come in really handy!;)

- Nick
 

vansmith

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Perhaps this should be a lesson in reviewing product specs before purchasing. ;)

I'm not a bigger compression guy here - I only really use it so I can send/upload a bunch of files as one. If you want some decent compression that isn't zip, look into tar combined with either gunzip or bunzip2. These are included with Macs and their are quite a few tutorials on how to use each (you're going to have to use the Terminal unless you find a front-end).
 

dtravis7


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StuffIt is pretty weak in my opinion, especially for the price. I tried it, Zipeg (which is free) and BetterZip. Liked the latter the best. Good price, allows you to preview an archive's contents before extracting (much like WinZip) and supports a whole lot of different compression types.

Like I said in the other thread, I love BetterZip. My favorite on OSX for compression and decompression. Again a thank you to CWA for turning me onto it.

I agree with Van that you can use the built in tools in OSX, but sometimes I find a graphical program easier when I am in a hurry.
 
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With the advent of OS X and larger HDD, stuffit seems to be well and truly a thing of the past and the best program from Smith Micro is the free Stuffit Expander, now called Stuffit 2010.
 
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I never stuff anything really. I have made a rar file once, which is fine, but I used a free program for that. I bought Stuffit when I first got a Mac years ago, never used it for stuffing, so learned my lesson!
 
C

chas_m

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The (free) Stuffit Expander is still quite useful, since it can unstuff Stuffit files (which you still very occasionally encounter) plus most other types of compression.

But Stuffit itself is pretty much dead. The built-in ZIP handling is more than enough for me, and those who need to make RAR and PAR type files can easily find inexpensive shareware that can do this for them (and then there are the aforementioned Terminal-accessible schemes).
 
OP
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Well I need it because I use Google docs for backup, but I am currently limited to 1024 MB total, and I have over 4 GB to back up. Any advice? Thanks.
 
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My advice would be honestly would be to pay for the upgraded storage. 20gig is $5/yr, which is nothing. Just go to settings and select upgrade service, they have a variety of service levels, the 20 gig is the lowest option and really cheap.
 

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