Remember kids: the more space a compression algorithm saves, the slower it is to deflate/inflate!

(imho this is why xzip isn't as mainstream as it is)

Space is also less of an issue these days when dealing with regular files.

(Sure, when you're dealing with old log files you *might* want someday, compress the hell out of them and stick them somewhere cheap, but that's not day to day work.)

Storage isn't, but throughout is. Compression is still useful if you need to, for example, move thru the network 10gb of logs. Or a db snapshot. Don't underestimate it.

I once came upon a 3gb file compressed in less than 200kb. It took like an hour to decompress, but at the end of it I was like:
Mmmagick! (O_O)

@mt3o Oh of course, but moving 10GB of logs and DB snapshots *shouldn't* be a manual day-to-day task. For that sort of thing compression is still of course very important.

For the average user downloading and storing some random files however, much less so.

@AlmondSauce you're both right and wrong at the same time. Right because you can't keep your ~/Documents directory filled with compressed archives of projects you are working on.
Wrong because you can compress the data you rely on and have it more or less transparent. Filesystems offer compression. Log rotating tools use compression. Even your webserver and browser have the capabilities compress the content that goes thru the network.
Your browser users compressed data without you even realizing, browser extensions are stored in zip archives. Office documents are zip archives.
That's about covering regular users needs.

For me, getting that damn db snapshot is something I do each time I work with that datasource, and I need that whole snapshot for each new bug/feature that is in the backlog. So it's pretty much day-to-day task.