Mijenix recommends a standard Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 system with 8 MB RAM and 110 KB free disk space.   It compresses (zips) files and allows you to use the files without having to unzip them.  The zip feature becomes transparent.  Simply said, it changes the name of the directory/folder from "ABC" to "ABC.ZIP".   It integrates with the Windows operating system to present the content of Zip archives as regular folders (with the extension .ZIP).   The folders are visible to all applications.   ZipMagic claims that a good rule of thumb is 50% compression ratio, but with highly compressible formats, such as bitmap files, compression ratios can be as high as 98%.  This is great for graphics files.

I can't say it often enough, when you are trying a new program, first READ THE INSTRUCTIONS/ Documentation.   You don't have to read every word but get a clue of what it is supposed to do and exactly how you should approach it.   Print the README file.   You can't imagine how many problems you can save yourself. Installation is easy, whether 3.1 or Windows95, two 3.5” disks take very little time. It includes an optional program called "ZipMagic Tools" that provides quick access to many common zip functions for the novice user.  It also includes Internet EasyUpdate downloads from the Internet so that users have the latest version. ZipMagic also gives you an Uninstall capability, of course, you will decompress any zipped files before you uninstall.

Most important, before you start zipping.  Do not try to compress your Windows or System directories.   Be careful about compressing directories containing applications.  It is not a good idea to rename a directory that contains a complex application.  If the Windows for Workgroups 32 Bit File Access is turned on, DOS programs will not be able to use the ZipMagic features.

What does the program do?   It allows you to view files in zip; modify files in zip without having to unzip; run programs inside of zip files; access zip file contents from any Windows program; display zip files as folders or files and access files in Zip from ‘Open’ and ‘Save As’ dialogs.  Options offered include: Zipping files to span multiple disks; create self-extracting zips in three formats, DOS, 16 Bit and 32-bit; password-protect ZIP files; check zip files for integrity and repair damaged zip files and a number of other options that make it exceptionally useful.

You can decompress your files easily, but why should you when you can use them effortlessly when they are zipped.  You can copy a large zip file to disks, and even place a large zip file on multiple disks.  Can you E-Mail zipped files? You have one capability which handles all attached file types, compressed and encrypted e-mail attachments.

ZipMagic supports all major archive formats.  It supports sub-folders, provides 100% support for anti-virus programs and the Windows 95 Find feature.   Users can use batch commands and all standard copy, move and rename functions on zips and contents of zips.

I used ZipMagic on an older 486/50 machine with an 80 meg harddrive.   It uses DOS and Windows 3.11 business applications, spreadsheets, financial data, word processing, and a few other programs.   Not many graphics.  I really wanted to avoid the expense of a larger harddrive and yet I wanted to be able to continue to keep archived data files on the machine.   No problem.  I zipped prior year files and can access them easily.  One data file was 1,931,771KB before being zipped and is now 158,203KB (This was determined by using Norton Commander since ZipMagic does not show the actual zipped file size easily}.  I zipped 10 large data files and you can imagine how delighted I was.   All of these files are readily available for viewing and/or modifying.  A number of programs that I rarely use are zipped, they take up less space and I can still use them.

The one area where I had problems was in word processing files. I had a number of WordPerfect 5.1 documents that I occasionally need to convert to My Windows word processor.   I tried to zip them and was very uneasy about the time it took to zip them.  Even trying to access them wasn't easy.   I then just decompressed them and placed them on floppy disks.   The decompression of the word-processing files took longer than the compression.   My own conclusion is that I will not compress word processing files.

It is very easy to run a program from a zip file.   Using File Manager or Explorer locate the Zip file, open the .zip folder, select the program you want to run and double click on it or create a icon or shortcut for your desktop so that you can easily run it in the future.  In DOS just go to the .ZIP directory and find the .exe command for your program.

Possible Incompatibilities: Windows 3.1 file management program that uses XTREE does not recognize .zip directories, but Xtree Gold doe - as does Norton Commander.   Since ZipMagic is a device driver, it is possible that there may be problems with other device drivers from other companies.   When I opened the box and looked through all of the inserts I found one that said "Bug confirmed when WordPerfect 8.0 and ZipMagic are used together".   It went on to explain that there was a design flaw in WordPerfect 8.0, if WP 8.0 has "version-control feature enabled" and you use the right mouse button to click on a ZipMagic archive folder to display its context menu, all files in the folder are erased.  I should hope by now (this information was confirmed in September, 1997) that the problem has been fixed.

Would I recommend this program?   Absolutely.   It seems that everyone would be happier keeping every program they might use on their machine no matter the size of the harddrive.