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Sorry Fred and Freak I know you hate when we guys do this but... (feel free to move this thread if you need to)

http://www.zlib.net/

They've fixed and improved a lot of things, they released v1.2.4 on March 14 2010.
The previous version was 1.2.3 from July 2005, this is a biggie I'd say.

I'm pretty damn sure that over half the software out there (apps, clients, servers) will be updating, considering how widespread zlib is.
Also, the zlib build (both x86 and x64) in PureBasic is also one of the fastest, so it'd be a shame if PureBasic didn't update it's lib as well, I'd almost call it a "bug"... get it? eheh.
I'm not saying for v4.50 (would be cool though), but v4.51 or v4.60 might be a little more realistic maybe?

I see zlib.lib in the PureBasic installation but am unclear what it is used for?

Will we see native PB command support for zlib soon? Maybe as part of the Packer library?

It's used for PNG encoder and decoder.

From the zlib page: "Version 1.2.5 fixes bugs in gzseek() and gzeof() that were present in version 1.2.4 (March 2010). All users are encouraged to upgrade immediately. "

That's one of the reasons why we don't rush on new libs. You may be not know, but using a new version of a lib in PB isn't as easy as it seems. We can't update the whole third libs every now and then, we do it if a PB command is clearly affected with it, or when it's too old. Many (most) softwares still run perfectly with old libs, of course. That's not because a new version is released than older software suddenly stop working...

never change a running system without big arguments

Ugh! Shame hey got kinda burnt on that one. Good thing I'm going with the 1.2.3 that comes with PureBasic (because of how fast it is actually, believe it or not but the decoding speed of zlib.lib in PureBasic vs the .dll linked to at zlib site, PB's build is almost the same, but on encoding PB's build is about twice as fast.)

Oh well, guess I (we?) have to keep an eye on latest zlib, I assume that if in a few months that it seem stable it could be updated to? There are some improvements in there that are pretty important.
Just a shame that just soon after I posted they had to find some darn bugs. The again, they did say they redid the entire gz_ stuff in it. (the deflate etc. stuff not affected obviously)

One interesting thing though, if anybody are using zlib but only the deflate/inflate and crc32 for example and not the rest like the gz_ stuff or compressBound() and deflateBound(), then there is nothing in 1.2.5 that benefit you over 1.2.3. PNG mostly uses just the deflate and inflate (raw variant where the windowbits is defined with a - sign, thus no z stream header or crc if I recall correctly).