Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!shelby!portia.stanford.edu!jessica.stanford.edu!aaron From: aaron@jessica.stanford.edu (Aaron Wallace) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Windows installation disk compression? Message-ID: <1991Feb12.172351.2613@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 12 Feb 91 17:23:51 GMT References: <1991Feb7.192957.7986@sunee.waterloo.edu> Sender: Aaron Wallace Organization: Academic Information Resources Lines: 22 In article waynet@wiffle.techbook.com (Wayne Tilton) writes: >But of course, this is all totally irrelevant. The original >poster's comment is still valid...why didn't they use a 'standard' >compression/decompression program so discussions like this could >have been avoided altogether, including my (apparently failed) >light hearted attempt at MS bashing?? Could it be that the trouble of porting over the PKZIP code so that it could work in protected mode (Setup, don't forget, has to be able to uncompress files from *within* Windows) would have been about as difficult as writing a new utility from scratch? Note that EXPAND.DLL must be a Windows-compliant program. Or could it be that Microsoft wanted to be nice to developers so that they could rely on users having Expand on their system without worrying about licensing issues with PK-Ware or whomever. This is a silly issue, though, isn't it? I'm kindof glad that I don't have to find umpteen billion scratch disks to make a backup of Windows software; I remember ordering the 31 (or so) 360K disks for Winword 1.0! Never did feel like buying 3 boxes of disks to make a backup... Aaron Wallace