RAR vs ZIP
Hi Fred, love the newsletter. I've been a Plus subscriber for a long time. I wanted to recommend one more compression program. I've tried virtually every one of them at one time or another, and have always come back to WinRar. It has a customizable interface (I've removed all buttons except Add, Extract To, Delete and Extract), its much much faster than 7Zip, much more intuitive, the Extract button extracts the file to where the compressed file is located (ie, here!), the Extract To button lets you pick where to extract, Add & Delete are self explanatory. Also, unlike WinZip, (this is from their website - You also receive the benefit of a life-time use of the WinRAR archiver. No upgrade fee to pay. When a new release is made, simply download and install, your license is valid for life.) Plus it offers the capability that most don't (although 7Zip does) of making split volume compression files that you can later recombine to make one large file. I've tried them all and in IMHO WinRar is far and away the best. $29 for lifetime license. Hope you'll take a looksee (especially since the trial is for free!) Cheers... Steve Butler
WinRAR is indeed a well-respected tool, Steve; and good. The RAR format has been around forever. Just as the "Zip" compression format traces back to one person--- Phil Katz, who created the original PKZip--- RAR was created by Eugene Roshal (RAR= Roshal ARchive). Like PKZip, RAR was originally a DOS tool, but RAR then made serious headway in Unix and Linux; and only later in Windows as well. The encoder is still proprietary, but the decoder is supported by many free tools.
Although WinRAR is a good tool, I have to wonder about the future of any of the commercial compression packages (especially those using a proprietary technology) now that full-featured and easy to use free and open-source tools are becoming so common. (See http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-05-04.htm )
But again, it's good to have choices!
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