Looking for a new (free) compression utility...

Ravi Bhavnani

I'm a big fan of WinZip 8.1. /ravi

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Abu Mami

7-zip all the way. I deleted all the others.

code frog 0

Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto! Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto! Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto! Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto! Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto! Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto! Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!Ditto!

code frog 0

After I found 7-zip I haven't looked back. It's just totally perfect for my needs and WinRAR always bugged me. Even after I bought a license to it. It bugs me.:laugh:

CastorTiu

I never tried, I'll give a try.

-- If you think the chess rules are not fair, first beat Anand, Kasparov and Karpov then you can change them. Moral is, don't question the work of others if you don't know the reason why they did it.

code frog 0

It has unbelievable compression compared to anything else out there. I can compress with WinZip and get 60% better with 7-zip. I added a link to my OP to.

CastorTiu

To compare compression always also I look in compression/time and not just in the final file size, using a big dictionary, solid file or specialized algorithms will give you better compression but may be will take time to do it. I'll compare a big file compressed with 7-zip and winrar.

-- If you think the chess rules are not fair, first beat Anand, Kasparov and Karpov then you can change them. Moral is, don't question the work of others if you don't know the reason why they did it.

code frog 0

You are absolutely correct. If you use 7-zip's maximum compression on a large file make sure you have *WADS* of memory and a fast disc drive. I'm going to score you not just one point for that observation but 5 because that's always a consideration for me when I use the "maximum" compression of 7-zip.

Dan Neely

.zip's a 25yo algorithm and has lagged badly in compression rate for a long time. Rar's been better than zip for years, bz2 and ace have a good edge on rar, 7zip got it's 15 minutes of fame by getting a good margin over bz2. Except as self extractors though, all the formats except zip have suffered from the same problem though, lack of decompresser support to the average luser. Unless your recipient is a geek, w4r3z d00d, or an aggressive user of no-cd patches the odds are the only decompresser they have is the one in windows which doesn't read any format more modern than zip. nor is the luser interested in, or capable of downloading the 3rd party tool. They'll just use someone else's product instead of yours because the brandX zip just works.

-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

ednrgc

WinRAR.

code frog 0

Yeah, I only use 7-zip for my stuff. When dealing with the rest of the world I used plain old "nothing fancy" zip and it's fine.

CastorTiu

Source 253.969Kb PST file (Outlook DB) 7-Zip | .7z | Normal Compression | 4MB dictionary | 138 sec | 174.178Kb | 58MB RAM used WinRAR | .rar | Normal Compression | 4MB dictionary | 170 sec | 175.257Kb | 37MB RAM used 7-Zip | .7z | Ultra Compression | 4MB dictionary | 144 sec | 174.084Kb | 60MB RAM used WinRAR | .rar | Best Compression | 4MB dictionary | 172 sec | 175.046Kb | 38MB RAM used 7-Zip | .7z | Ultra Compression | 64MB dictionary | 262 sec | 165.791Kb | 680MB RAM used Looks like 7-Zip has better compression size and time after all, good to know.

-- If you think the chess rules are not fair, first beat Anand, Kasparov and Karpov then you can change them. Moral is, don't question the work of others if you don't know the reason why they did it.

code frog 0

That's pretty cool.

Bassam Abdul Baki

ZipGenius. Free and handles almost all known compression types.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." - Sir Walter Scott Web - Blog - RSS - Math - LinkedIn - BM

peterchen

I can't really pin it down - maybe just thinking about it makes me so irrationale that there's no useful answer to be gotten. The UI looks nice but there are ever so slight stumbling blocks that make it not as smooth as WinZip is (maybe if one gets used to it it is similar the other way round). It was always a format rearely supported by other "general" archivers, for one reason or another. This was really a problem when web access was scarce, and still now I hate to download just another software because someone sends me an archive in a format not widely supported. The home page looks a bit homegrown, and google:WinRAR spits out obvious traffic traps. It just feels - sorry - unprofessional.

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CastorTiu

I know what you mean, I think is something with the word "rar" :) that makes feel the user "this is not good". On DOS times I used to use PKArc and then PKZip came up, immediately I adopted PKZip, some time later a friend of mine told me about RAR and tried to convince me to use it because it had better compression rate but for “some unknown reason” I did not switch for 2 or 3 years, was a feeling about RAR that didn't like. When WinRAR 3 (3 I think was) came out it had a HUGE compression/speed difference against WinZIP (6 I think). So I started to use from then, after that I loved it. Now WinZip 10/11 is more advance, but really you cannot use it anymore unless you really get a license and also it is already too late, WinZip is not on my list of choices anymore. Today in Internet when you get a program (usually big) is very often it is .RAR file, I guess may be 7-zip will become more popular and we will start to see it more often on Internet.

-- If you think the chess rules are not fair, first beat Anand, Kasparov and Karpov then you can change them. Moral is, don't question the work of others if you don't know the reason why they did it.

Dan Neely

For personal stuff I almost never compress any more. Disk space is dirt cheap, and noncompressed backups allow for much easier data recovery if anything does go wrong with the media. One of my friends backed all his data into a single multiCD zip and after a HD crash discovered that a dead CD in the middle rendered all of it useless.

-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

CarlG

I'd cast my vote on IZArc. It handles EVERYTHING! http://www.izarc.org/ Completely freeware. No Ads, Nags or anything. Regards Carl

jakeshare

I use IZArc: http://izarc.org. Good interface, lots of features and formatis (including .7z). From the site: IZArc is the ultimate archive utility supports many archive formats like 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. Jacob

Jecc

Seconded. I specially like the "Extract to separate folders" command. Now if there were only a "Extract to a folder if the contents aren't themselves in a folder" option...