Illustrates the size benefits you can achieve by compressing a stream. It also benchmarks the time taken to write the compressed text and the normal text to the underlying files.

/*
Author: Sockreg
Occupation: Student, .NET Enthusiast
Usage: Start a console application and paste the following code. Files are created in C:\ and are named Zipped.zip and NotZipped.txt
Functionality: To illustrate the size benefits you can achieve by compressing a stream. It also benchmarks the time taken to write the compressed text
               and the normal text.
*/

using System;
using System.IO.Compression;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;

class MainClass {

    static void Main() {
        Nullable<long> timeForZip = null;
        Nullable<long> timeForNormalText = null;

        Stopwatch zipEllapse = new Stopwatch();
        zipEllapse.Start();
        FileStream myFileStream = new FileStream(@"C:\Zipped.zip", FileMode.OpenOrCreate);
        using (GZipStream myZippedStream = new GZipStream(myFileStream,
                                                    CompressionMode.Compress)) {
            StringBuilder textToZip = new StringBuilder();
            for (int count = 0; count <= 200000; count++) { textToZip.Append(String.Format("MyText{0}  \n", count)); }
            var byteArray = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(textToZip.ToString());
            myZippedStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
            myZippedStream.Flush(); zipEllapse.Stop(); timeForZip = 
                                        zipEllapse.ElapsedMilliseconds;
            using (FileStream mySecondFileStream = new FileStream(@"C:\NotZipped.txt",
                                                                        FileMode.OpenOrCreate)) {
                Stopwatch normalEllapse = new Stopwatch();
                normalEllapse.Start();
                StringBuilder textToWrite = new StringBuilder();
                for (int count = 0; count <= 200000; count++) { textToWrite.Append(String.Format("MyText{0}  \n", count)); }
                var normalTextByteArray = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(textToWrite.ToString());
                mySecondFileStream.Write(normalTextByteArray, 0, normalTextByteArray.Length);
                mySecondFileStream.Flush();
                normalEllapse.Stop(); timeForNormalText = normalEllapse.ElapsedMilliseconds;
            }
        }

        FileInfo myFile = new FileInfo(@"C:\Zipped.zip"); 
        Console.WriteLine(String.Format(@"Zipped file: {0} bytes = {1} mbs {3}Time taken: {2} Milliseconds{3}{3}", 
                                    myFile.Length, Math.Round(((decimal)myFile.Length/1024/1024), 4), 
                                    timeForZip, Environment.NewLine));

        myFile = new FileInfo(@"C:\NotZipped.txt");
        Console.WriteLine(String.Format(@"Not Zipped file: {0} bytes = {1} mbs {3}Time taken: {2} Milliseconds",
                                    myFile.Length, Math.Round(((decimal)myFile.Length / 1024 / 1024), 4),
                                    timeForNormalText, Environment.NewLine));

        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}