7-Zip - who needs Winzip?

I've loved playing around with ZIP files since the pre-windows MS Dos days, back then we used Pkzip to compress and decompress zip files.

Since the advent of the internet zip files are everywhere, and you have to know what to do with them if you like downloading stuff. (knowing how to unzip is more important than how to zip, a friend of mine only know how to extract files (unzip) from a zip file, but she has no idea how to compress her files in a zip file. )

In the early days of windows (Win 3.1) Winzip reigned supreme for handling archived files, nothing to challenge it. Nowadays there are many choices, shareware and freeware. My favorite is the freebie open source 7-Zip. It supports several types of compressed file (including RAR extraction), and even has its own compressed file type "7-z" which compresses at a higher rate than zip files (though not much use for sharing with people who don't have 7-Zip installed). For Windows 98/ME 7 zip is essential, Windows XP has its own native support of zip files, but I find 7-Zip more flexible and easier to use.



7-Zip's web site