The Difference in (Un)Zip-Performance

I got a nice present for Christmas, last year - a Windows 8 Tablet/Notebook convertible. With the extra battery in the keyboard and an Intel-Atom SoC the power lasts easily for 12h or continues use. Of course, since the only component which can drain the battery is the 10" touchscreen.

I got used to the fact that it's extremely slow and I need to wait for some applications to launch. (Even more compared to my Sandy-Bridge Quad-Core Laptop.) It is a price I'm willing to pay for having all-day battery and Internet connectivity on a full featured Windows 8. I can run there my favorite editors like Sublime Text, Eclipse or even Visual Studio. And with ~1.5kg (with the keyboard) and a full-sized USB Port, it is pretty portable and easily extend-able as well. Or I can sometimes even use it as a charger for my smart-phone, which cannot compete with the battery-lifetime.

Working with Zip-Files

However, one of the things which annoyed me the most, was the extremely low performance in unpacking zip-archives. Since I was used to use the default Windows Application for it, I thought it was just a problem with the slow Atom SoC.

Turns out, NO!

Using PeaZip

After waiting again for few minutes, while Windows showed me that it will take roughly another 10-12 min to unpack a small 85 MB archive, I had enough. I stopped the process, took my, already installed and preferred archive-handler: PeaZip - and tried its performance. After ~80sek! the archive was unpacked and I could continue working.

Conclusion

Choosing the right application, matters.