The September issue of Mac Monitor contained a comparison of Compactor and StuffIt Classic. In response I would like to update that article to reflect the changes made in StuffIt Deluxe. Although this is not intended as a rebuttal to Randy Bisig’s comments, I would like to note his contrasting of StuffIt’s “more Mac-ish” interface with Compactor. Randy seems to feel “Compactor is much more practical.” That is a somewhat odd thing to say about a Macintosh program!
StuffIt Deluxe has eliminated many of Compactor’s advantages. Folders may now be viewed from within the archive; the Get Info window provides much more information than does Compactor; and StuffIt Deluxe is even more Mac-ish than before. I have tried to duplicate Randy’s compression trials for the two programs. Of course I don’t have the same files he used, but I have used the same types. My results are shown in the table. It is a great deal more difficult to fairly compare these two programs as there are many options to consider. StuffIt Deluxe was used in best compression mode with automatic virus detection and encryption turned off. Compactor has no such options.
As the table makes clear, under these conditions, there is little to chose from in these two packages in terms of compaction ability. Just as an extra exercise, I also compressed all these files with StuffIt Deluxe set for fastest compression and tabulated those results as well. It was noticeably faster compressing, but a great deal of efficiency of compression was lost.
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