How to make a .zip archive in Windows XP

I don't generally need to put things in .zip format. I often have to extract things out of .zip archives, which is easy in just about any computer system these days.

But making a .zip archive is something I've never had the occasion to do — until I was asked how today.

It was an easy bit of Googling (or is it "Googleing"?) to get here:

On Windows XP machines:

1. Start Windows Explorer (right-click the Start menu, then choose Explore).
2. Navigate to the folder in which you want to create a .zip file.
3. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Compressed (zipped) Folder. Type a name for the new folder, and then press ENTER.
4. Using Windows Explorer, drag any files you wish to place into the .zip file.

Go to the page for instructions on using Winzip.

A regular .zip archive isn't all that small. I had the occasion to extract a 7zip file recently and installed a program to do it. 7zip really makes things small. And it's is an open-source technology, which means it's free and open — the way it should be.

In case you're keeping score, Winzip isn't free.

7zip is free and open source (and doubly good) and deserves your support (even financially if you use it to make money, but that's totally up to you).

PKZip is a commercial product, and it seems to have been eclipsed by PKWare's SecureZIP product.

GNU/Linux and a whole bunch of Unix-like operating systems (including OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.) offer plenty of free, open-source file compression, archiving and backup utilities that can be either installed or invoked with a few keystrokes.