So you like Winzip? Perhaps your a Winrar fan, or maybe, you have no clue what I'm talking about. Allow me to explain. In order to increase the transmission of files over the internet and to converse precious bandwidth, many files are commonly compressed into smaller archive files where they will take much less time to transfer from one point to another. There are quite a few compression schemes available (zip, rar, lzh to name a few) so it makes sense that the best programs for decoding these files are ones that can support many different compression formats. Of the few that do this, Winzip is by far the most popular, but by no means the best.

Winzip has a simple to use interface, support for numerous different compression formats and a relatively low cost. Power Archiver on the other hand, supports as many (and even more I believe) formats, has the same interface as winzip (it supports "skins" allowing it to look many different ways) and is completely free. That's right, all the functionality of winzip plus more and you won't pay a penny.

Power Archiver has long been a integral part of my daily computing experience. I use it so much to compress/decompress files that I almost forget its not a part of windows itself. The reason I hardly pay any attention to it is because its so good. I never stop and think "Why is this program so slow" because it isn't, its fast. And I never have to restart it when it crashes because its doesn't crash. I used to use winzip but the transition during the first time I used Power Archiver was completely seemless because I really didn't notice the difference; its almost identical in function, feature, and form.

It can't do absolutely everything the competition can. But there are only a few select features (likely ones you wouldn't need anyways) which aren't yet available on Power Archiver. It will not compress rar files (it WILL decompress them), but I'm pretty sure you have to get Winrar in order to get that functionality (who needs it?). Also, it won't make those handy self-extracting exe files that Winzip can do yet.

In short, Power Archiver is what all programs should be. It is fast, stable, able to handle everything the competition can and more, and perhaps best of all, its completely free. If you have any need whatsoever for a good decompression tool, or perhaps your just tired of winzip nagging you to register, then go to www.powerarchiver.com and check it out (its not like it will cost you any money).



Recommended: Yes