It sounds too good to be true. A software suite that usually takes up gigabytes of space, squeezed into a file the size of a few songs? Before you click that download button, let’s sit down and talk about what that file actually is, why it’s dangerous, and what your alternatives are.

So, if you download a file claiming to be Office 2013 in 100MB, one of three things is happening:

Even a “lite” or “stripped-down” version (e.g., only Word, Excel, and PowerPoint without templates or help files) cannot drop below after compression. A full suite using modern compression tools like 7-Zip at ultra settings will still yield a file size of roughly 800MB to 1.2GB .