I agree with it very much. When I'm zipping files on Linux and my system grinds to a halt due to hard drive contention, I don't want faster zip times, I just want the damn thing to be responsive while it zips in the background.
If you're running zip from the command line, try setting the priority with 'nice' when you run it. That should allow you to continue using your system while zip crunches away in the background. If you forget to set the priority level at runtime, use 'renice' to set the priority level of a running process.
