This one month traveling, where I was forced to use my Windows laptop, allowed me to discover many new useful and interesting software for the paid operating system.
Back in the day my compression tool of choice was Winzip. Not because I liked it, but because it was the only one I knew. In fact I was heavily annoyed by the “Do you want to register your WinZip copy now?” message that welcomed me every time I opened the program.
This month I decided to search the web for something open source, and hopefully better than WinZip. After some time looking around I came across 7-Zip, and I think it will be difficult to find something that tops that.
7-Zip is free, light, has a record compression rate, and works with most formats. What else could you want? Here is the complete list of features taken from the official website:
- High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
- For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
- Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
- Self-extracting capability for 7z format
- Integration with Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Powerful command line version
- Plugin for FAR Manager
- Localizations for 69 languages
If you are tired of WinZip, give this a try.
- What is your compression utility of choice?
