7-Zip -- High Compression File Archiving
Posted on Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 9:32 PM by Randall
If you download files for Windows from the Internet, you need a program that can unzip archive files. Unfortunately, the best known ones (WinZip, PowerArchiver, WinRAR) cost money. 7-Zip is free, open source software that handles zip files and a number of other major compression formats. It will pack and unpack ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR archives and can unpack RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB -- in addition to its own 7z format (which has a high compression ratio). 7-Zip is as easy to use as any of the payware archive programs nand often produces better results (smaller archives).
Here are some of 7-Zip's features as listed on the 7-Zip website:
* High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
* 7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL
* For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
* Self-extracting capability for 7z format
* Integration with Windows Shell
* Powerful File Manager
* Powerful command line version
* Plugin for FAR Manager
* Localizations for 60 languages
Rating: 4 stars
Operating System: Windows 2K and XP
License:
GNU LGPL
Price: Free
Version Reviewed: 4.32
Web
Site: http://www.7-zip.org/