There are a number of brands that have become synonymous with the type of product they are selling. Examples of this are Hoover for a vacuum cleaner, although I think that one is probably a little old these days. Coke for all cola drinks is another example and then closer to home there is Google for web search and the iPod brand has become pretty much synonymous with digital music players these days. My kids call my very old iRiver MP3 player “Dad’s iPod” for instance, despite it looking absolutely nothing like the real thing.

Are there examples of this ubiquitous branding in the computer software world? Microsoft Office perhaps? One good example I think is probably Corel’s WinZip compression software. People talk about Win Zipping or Zipping a file rather than compressing it. WinZip is probably the original compression utility for Microsoft Windows OS. It is a pretty powerful and easy-to-use tool that quickly zips and unzips your files to help conserve disk space and greatly reduce e-mail transmission time. Compression software is something that you really need and I always expect it to be there on a new computer, and surprised when it isn’t. There are plenty of freeware options for those who are cost conscious, but I will normally purchase a copy of WinZip to install whenever setting up a new Windows computer.

What do you use for file compression?