7-Zip is one of strongest free archiving program out there. In addition to this, is also open source, which has spawned a number of free archiving tools based on the 7-Zip engine. A good thing, too, as under the hood this software packs quite a punch.
I recently downloaded a 4GB DVD ISO saved under RAR format and split into multiple archives. I was using IZarc as my archiving software and was surprised when the extracting process failed. I assumed it was a bad archive and was going to delete the files and move on when on a whim I decided to install try 7-Zip. Sure enough, the extraction worked. Great, I thought, a makeshift test that I could use to test different free archivers (ZipGenius, Quickzip, IZarc, and Extractnow failed to extract the file, while TUGzip and 7-Zip weresuccessful).
7-Zip will compress and extract archives in 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR formats and will extract RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS formats. Although I dont use it (and am not planning to), the 7z (7zip) format is supposed to offer a higher compression ratio than either ZIP or RAR.
Cool things about 7-Zip: very simple interface, fast and powerful archiver, 2-10% better compression ratio for ZIP format (compared to Winzip and PKzip), many formats supported.
Not so cool: creates autoextract archives only for 7z format, no support for ACE format, could use more elegance/form factor, archive icon not very attractive (sounds silly but actually matters to me).
A free alternative to: Winzip, Winrar, PKzip, etc…
Version tested: 4.42
Go to download page for latest version.
The program home page. 7-Zip entry on Wikipedia.
Samer Kurdi
The only thing I don’t like about 7-zip is that you can’t ‘drag & drop’ a file to add it to an archive.
Other than that, it’s best free archiver out there.
The detail i dont like is the GUI which could be easily (and i hope will be) fixed in next releases. I use it as a portable decompressor on my USB Drive and it works perfectly.
Isn’t it winrar free? I’ve donwloaded from winrar.com and using it without paying anyhting. I pretty much like it.
Happy new year !-!
o:)))))
ZipGenius now supports more than 20 compressed archive formats, including CD/DVD-ROM image files in ISO9660 standard,RAR, ARJ, ACE, CAB, SQX, OpenOffice.org documents and the excellent 7-zip. ZipGenius now can precompress executable files going to be added to a ZIP archive through the UPX compressor.
And, I prefer the pop-up window’s options over 7Zip’s.
> Not so cool: creates autoextract archives only for 7z format
Since 7z can compress better than the others, what is the point having autoextract archives in other format?
The file is going to autoextract anyway, not that the end user will need to download a decompressor.
One of my fav Open source product.
and serves a blazzzzing fast Windows explorer with dual pane !!!
Thanks again, Samer
P.S. Do people return to ‘past’ reviews for ulterior information, update or whatnot?
From my experience, 7-zip is a great too. Freeware always seems to work better.