Compression software can create a variety of file formats, including Zip, ARJ, LZH, Gzip, TAR, and CAB.

Zip files are "archives" used for distributing and storing files. Zip files contain one or more files. Usually the files "archived" in a Zip are compressed to save space. Zip files group files and can make transporting and copying these files faster.

Zip files can save time and space, and make downloading software and transferring e-mail attachments faster.

Most files available on FTP sites, bulletin boards and electronic services, like CompuServe, are distributed as archives. Two benefits of using archives for electronic file distribution are that only one file transfer operation ("download") is required to obtain all related files, and file transfer time is minimized because the files in an archive are compressed.

It is often useful to send a group of related files to an associate. Rather than distributing individual files it is often easier to distribute the files as an archive to benefit from the file grouping and compression.

Some files are important but used infrequently. To save disk space simply compress these files into an archive when they are not used, and decompress them only when needed.

There are other types of compression software including software that compresses media streams and TCP/IP packets before they are transmitted across the public Internet.

7-Zip is an open source file compression software program that can run on Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems. It handles the following compression formats.
Packing/unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS

ARJ is a file archiver that compresses files into a disk space saving archive. It claims to be fast, reliable, and has a variety of features which include Windows 9x, Millenium long filename support, file version management, data damage protection, ANSI escape sequence display handler, configurable command options and multiple volume archives (archives that span diskettes).

It can run on most PCs from the IBM PC XT to Pentium IIIs and is compatible from version 1.0 to present.

WinRAR is an archive manager which can backup data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.

WinZip is a compression software product that allows users to create and open zip files.