I often perform upgrades on my client servers via remote desktop. While it's quite powerfull tool, when you want to transfer 100 MB it's a bit of slow. Therefore I use zip to make files smaller and avoid necessity of installing additional software on a client's server. 7zip is a good alternative, but recently I cannot force it to make SFX archives (not implemented - error on 64bit system).
What do you use for compressing software (executables and libraries)? Is there a better (faster) way to move software from your local PC to servers via RDC? What are you using on your day-to-day basis?