When I started working in my new job, I set up my PC and needed an archiver. The standard choice would be WinZip or WinRAR but I didn't want through the hassle of registering software (paying = fill out forms etc) so I checked out a free archiver.
I found FreeZip in version 2.2.8
Since all archive programs use the same ZIP compression, they are automatically compatible and the compression ratio will be the same no matter what shell you use.
So why not just use some free tool?

FreeZip was a quick download of only 136 kB. Compare that to WinZip which is 1260 kB. Almost 10 times as much!

It installs in seconds in c:\program files\freezip\ and as I meanwhile found out, the uninstaller will remove it completely.

By the way, do not confuse it with "FreeZip!" (With an exclamation mark at the end), FreeZIP! is free also but displays advertising and supposedly spies on your computing habits.

The reviewed product "FreeZip" had 5 Tucows cows, so I thought it would be some good software. No, it is not.


FreeZip misses:

- Generally less options than WinZip

- Encryption = creating a password protected ZIP archive. I use that when I mail source codes, even though I know that the encryption is weak.

- Add files with wildcard. I often do that. I must say that I like WinZip's file selector box. I can type in *.DOC and hit the button "Add with wildcards" and it will add all *.DOC files to my archive. I use this a lot and missed it in FreeZip.

- Doesn't even associate itself with the ZIP extension. That's a shortcoming of the install program, but I bet that the average user is too lazy or doesn't know how to associate ZIP files so that they open with FreeZip. There's no browser support either to automatically handle downloads.

- FreeZip has no interface to a virus-scanner. This is something that I appreciate in WinZip as well.

- To make self-extracting EXE files, you need an additional download.


FreeZip has:

- The basic functionality. Opening an existing ZIP file, creating a new one, adding and removing files to/from a ZIP. Just as WinZip.

- FreeZip does now offer spanning over multiple disks = splitting up a large ZIP file into pieces of 1.44 MB = one floppy each. But it doesn't offer various disk sizes. WinRAR has this, WinZip not.


FreeZip's advantages:
- It's free and a quick download. With this limited functionality, they cannot charge for it. Since it is free to re-distribute, it may be useful if you have to distribute data or software and need to give your customers a free archiver.
- The user interface resembles WinZip's at first glance. That's not really a surprise.


Summary

All in all, I don't recommend FreeZip. I'm not the greatest fan of WinZip - I found that WinRAR is better (see my review on it) but I have to say that FreeZip just cannot replace WinZip. There's too much missing.

I'll have to register WinRAR at work.

Recommended: No