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?
