7-zip and other archivers

[iansl]

This is a nifty little program. Found at 7-zip.org, the file manager from 7-zip itself is very versitile (albeit techie) and murders zip as to how small it compresses, and if you choose the right 7-zip format, the time in which it compresses, too, although this isn't as big of a focus. It even beat Stuffit's X format out when compressing about 27 MB worth of WMA files, usually not something that would benefit from compression. Armed with PPmD compression, 7-zip, in maybe 2 minutes, compressed the 27 or so MB of essentially uncompressible files into a nice 26,160K, enough to include a self-extractor and still be smaller than the origonals. Stuffit, on the other hand, was either fast and large (regular Stuffit) or very, very slow and large (Stuffit X). I also noticed that Stuffit was unstable when compressing X archives.

7-zip is free and has relatively few rough edges. and its 7-zip algorithm is available in several free zipping programs (TUGZip, IZArc). It also compresses to BZip, GZip, TAR (or rather stores as TAR), and Zip. With Zip, it compresses even better than the leading zippers, beat that! :D. I give this program a hearty reccommendation for anyone looking for a great zipping program.

Some other things to point out: Stuffit, to me at least, isn't all it's chalked up to be. It has support for a lot of formats, and its expander is useful, and its drop spot is innovative, but look elsewhere if you want to pay for an archiver.

WinZip is nice, but most of its features can be had elsewhere for free. If you must, though, don't feel bad for paying for WinZIp. it's a good piece of software.

ZipCentral is a good archiver, albeit not too big in the way of features. And it has a distinctive blue theme...

TUGZip is a multitalented archiver with everything, including bugs.

IZArc is nice, but it can't default to 7-zip and has a wierd add dialog and is a bit unstable.

And thththtththththat's all folks :).