S5Zip (Formerly PsiZip)


Serge Shestopalov looks set to be the hero of all S5 users! He has made S5Zip available from his WWW site, and I've put a copy of it here as well. It has now been rebadged as an RMR product, and a separate Geofox One version has been produced as well. For £15 you can have a way of compressing and expanding ZIP archives on the Series 5. As Shareware, Serge has commendably released a full version with no crippling, and a minimal "nag" screen on start-up and exit, and I think he deserves the support of every S5 owner who uses it.

Adding a File to an Archive

What can I say about it, except that it works simply and unobtrusively? It doesn't quite reach the sublime heights of David Pilling's SparkFS, in that it isn't a true filing system. That means you have to expand files out of a ZIP archive before you can open them, but the latest version (v1·1) now lets you open ZIP files simply by double-tapping them to launch S5Zip .

An Archive Downloaded with the Message Suite

Serge has even provided the files for direct download from his WWW site onto a Series 5 with the Message Suite, thus avoiding the paradox of "how can I unzip this unzip application if I haven't got an unzip application in the first place"! For me, it means that I can ZIP up lots of files that I want to have available (e.g. instructions for applications, old articles for Archive, last year's Agenda, etc.) to refer to without them taking up so much space on my machine.


File Transfer
The delight of browsing the WWW via the Message Suite, and downloading S5 software, which can be expanded and installed directly onto the machine is quite sublime! My S5 feels just that bit more like a "proper" computer if I don't actually need another computer for anything other than backup storage. S5Zip can help in the backing up process too, as files can be kept on a Compact Flash without taking up so much space, and there is now no need to unzip applications before transferring them to the Psion. Files can be compressed on the S5 before transferring them to the desktop machine for storage, and as SparkFS can then be used to open the archives after the transfer, it is possible to check that they haven't been corrupted in the process, providing extra peace of mind. This has proved extremely reliable in my experience, and seems to be an excellent option.

Serge has been quietly updating it over the last few weeks, and so if you haven't downloaded the final release version, I'd recommend doing so. It hasn't crashed or let me down at all since I started using it, and there aren't many pieces of software I can say that about!


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