So.....awhile back I bought Simon King's ZipMagic, mostly out of curiosity. While testing it out, I discovered it is in large part based on WimLib. And, Wikipedia seems to imply that much of his compression technology is based on stuff that was largely pre-dating his work, and therefore borrowed, to a degree. Meanwhile, he has a "patent pending" on his Lempel-Ziv Simon compression technology. But if he feels his work is worthy of a patent, then there must be something which sets it apart from the rest of the pack, since part of the premise of a patent is that you must be creating a unique technology which has not yet been done by others. Simon King says that what makes his compression unique is that it can do disk compression, whereas others mostly seem to focus on file-based compression.
I am mostly looking into his products as part of a desire to see what benefits can be had from disk compression, especially as it relates to compressing the system drive on an SSD. I have read some reports by others that compressing the system drive on an SSD can achieve decent space gains with relatively no real sacrifice in regards to performance (since SSDs are already fast then any hit is largely negated). Some even claim it is beneficial and advantageous to do so, citing their own tests. My experience shows that Microsoft's built-in volume/file compression is very ineffective and achieves a very low compression ratio.
Another thing I want to look into is the possibility of using ZipMagic as a backup and recovery solution. I'm also aware that this can be achieved with WimLib.
I ran into 2 issues after ordering. For well over a month, maybe 2, I did not receive my product key in any email, even though it was implied that that was how the product key would be sent. So I called his payment processing company not once but twice. The first time I was told that he would be notified and get back to me within 24 hours. I never heard back. After a 2nd call, it was discovered that my email address was listed incorrectly with an additional character, perhaps a spelling error on my part when I placed the order. So they corrected it, and within 24 hours I received my key and was able to activate the product.
Another issue I ran into is that Windows 10 found corrupt files after compressing the C drive, after running sfc /scannow. But on a different run, with C still compressed, no corruption was found. Before compression all was clean. Perhaps possible file corruption is the nature of compression?
I do take a bit of issue in regards to how he seems to license his products. From what I've read on his forums, minor software upgrades are free, but major upgrades are an additional nominal fee. Not as much as the initial cost of the product, but still extra nonetheless. I'm more an advocate of charging when a major version is released, while giving away for free minor software upgrades in between each major version.
So, is Simon King just a clever marketer that largely borrows the ideas of others, changes them a little here and there, then calls them his own? Or does his products have any real merit? I've seen accusations leveled against him here to the effect that he is a spammer as well. Does anyone here think he is an outright scammer?
Right now I'm reserving judgement, just trying to keep my mind and possibilities open by investigating different ideas as much as possible.
