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FEAD Compressing Compressed Files by 50-75%?

Posted by Cliff on from the if-it-seems-that-way-it-probably-is dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I just installed Acrobat Reader and found that it was using FEAD which claims - 'FEAD© Optimizer© significantly reduces the size of application programs on average by 50% (in some cases up to 75%, depending on the specific software), even when they are already compressed with common compression technology like ZIP or CAB.' . It seems that they optimize each application individually at thieir labs. But an average of 50% compression on already compressed binary files seems to be too good to be true. Anyone familiar with how someone may be able to achieve this?"

2 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Compressing data exe compressors don't by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When you use an executable compressor, like PKLITE, on an executable file, it can't compress all the data. This is because EXEs will dynamically load more data, and if that data is compressed, the code can't read it.

    I suspect these guys are going in and manually altering the code to perform a decompression. This would certainly produce a benefit.

    Here's something for you to try: Take an executable and zip it. If it compresses, then there's probably SOME give in it. And most executables I see are compressable.

  2. Hmm... by bobbozzo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I just RAR'd (RAR 3.11 with -m5) my AcroRead folder... it came out 300k bigger than the 16MB full installer...

    Using ZIP -9 gives a 20MB file.

    So, FEAD offers slightly better compression. (I know there's other crap, including the installer, registry settings, icons, ...)

    Still, is it worth the annoyance of the greatly increased install time?

    Also, how is FEAD saying they are 50% better than other compressors?

    --
    Nothing to see here; Move along.