Zippers

Following recent discussion about archive compressor/extractor utilities (Zippers). I had a ferret about and downloaded six and ran a very quick test on each of them. This is what I found. FreeZip: reasonably fast; only supports ZIP format; reverts to a dos window when working (not pretty). www.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/ 7-zip: fast; supports ZIP, RAR, CAB, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR; simple interface; separate config in installed folder; "Open", "Extract" and "Add to" on right click context; nicely simple. www.7-zip.com Power Archiver: this one supports 18 archive formats; fast; lots of config options; nice clean interface; customisable toolbar; right-click includes email option; self extractor creation option. Registration (fee) optional but not required. www.powerarchiver.com/ QuickZip: supports 33 extensions (19 true file types); email option; lots of configuration options; has internal graphics viewer; interface layout not to my taste; I could not make it produce a right-click context (although it's supposed to); don't know about speed - gave up at this point; http://www.tucows.com/system/preview/194312.html Ultimate Zip: does (so far as I can see) everything that WinZip does; context menu includes create self-extracting, zip&email; wizard option; tidy interface. www.ultimatezip.com Zip Central: much the same as Ultimate Zip but no email or wizard options; does not support cab file extraction; no other minus points; disk-span facility (large files to floppies) has a nice "feel" to it. http://ZipCentral.isCool.net So, if anybody is looking for a zipper prog, 7-Zip is worth a look for its sheer simplicity. Power Archiver, Ultimate Zip and Zip Central all have things in their favour and in the end it's probably just a matter of personal preference - worth checking them out to see which you prefer. For the others I looked at - no further comment. FWIW I have decided to use Power Archiver but keep "Ultimate" in uninstalled form, "just in case".