Good ol 2.04g... the only version i ever used :P

I'm also using exclusively 7-zip nowadays, it is a good alternative to WinRAR.

Where WinRAR (the last version I remember using) is better than 7-zip:

- I recall it might support some legacy compression systems out of the box, while 7-zip doesn't. Either ARJ and/or WinACE, I don't recall for sure. So if you have old archives that you still want to open, 7-zip might not be able to open them all.

- You can set WinRAR to automatically test the archive after creating it. With 7-zip, you have to test it separately afterwards. Yes I have sometimes had cases where the created archive was corrupted from the beginning, e.g. when creating it directly to an USB hard drive. That's why I want to verify the created archives right away.

- Probably many other features too which I personally don't use.

Where 7-zip is better than WinRAR, or pretty much any other Windows archiver tool I've used (including PeaZip):

- 7-zip lets you verify the integrity of several archives in one swoop. So if you e.g. have a directory with hundreds of zip, rar, 7zip etc. archives, or even .iso disc images, just select them all (Ctrl-A) and right click, and select to verify them. Then just wait for the report if there were problems with any of them.

As far as I can tell, with other tools, including WinRAR, I'd actually have to select each archive separately in order to test it. This 7-zip feature is a biggie to me, and is probably the main reason I choose to use 7-zip nowadays (even over PeaZip, which doesn't seem to have the same either.)

Now I am expecting someone to point out that the same is possible with other tools as well, and I was just stupid enough not to find it... but at least in 7-zip it was quite obvious how to do it.

deleted

Presumably because hardly anyone ever buys it, so they charge a lot to those 25 people who do?

OK ;)

With WinRAR you can verify multiple archive files but you need to start WinRAR and then use it to browse to the files/folders that contain archives that you want to verify in bulk. But I agree, it would have been nicer if they'd also integrated this feature directly into Windows Explorer itself.

I don't feel bad for businesses that have no business sense (Winrar).

On the other hand, they have to be making SOME money, or updates for each OS wouldn't exist.
Yea. Uh.
My archiving doesn't go that deep to need something like this, Im sure.

I can also recommend 7zip.
BTW have some of you experience with nanozip?

+1 for 7-Zip

file rooooolerrrr (:

Two things: What you claim is an LGPL library actually has a restriction that forbids the use of it to reverse engineer the format, which makes it non-free (by both the Free Software Foundation and Debian's DFSG). Also, ar and tar do not actually compress files; all they do is combine multiple files into a single one. (It is very common to compress tar files with another program like gzip or xz; so common, in fact, that such files are more common than uncompressed tar files!)

Another thing to note: zip actually has one advantage over compressed tar files; the zip format supports random access, so you can easily uncompress just one file in the middle of the zip file. Of course, there are trade-offs to every meaningful design decision, and as a result, zip files end up being slightly bigger.

Edit: Added "another thing to note" paragraph.

There is no contest 7-zip is free, in many testing came out best in how much the files are actually compressed.

7-zip is the king and for now shall be.

Actually, I believe xz is considered better these days. In fact, kernel.org (the site that hosts the upstream Linux kernel source) uses xz compression these days.

Only that? The developer really is generous though despite the hefty pricing if you really really want to support the dev.