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- Quick specs
- Price: Free to try (40-day trial, some features disabled); $29.00 to buy (Buy it now)
- Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/NT
- Date added: January 06, 2005
- Total Downloads: 71,544,207
- Downloads last week: 316,497
- See full specifications
A newer version of WinRAR is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 1471 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
There are plenty of solid compression utilities to choose from, but this shareware powerhouse offers the features and ease of use that might place it at the top of its category. WinRAR is easy to use, lightweight, and flexible. An intuitive interface lets you mouse over icons to see their functions and if you don't like their candy-coated appearance, you can always choose from several themes at the developer's site. The Folder Tree Panel, a recent addition to the interface, makes sifting through your directories to find files for archiving easier than ever. But once you see the size savings of a RAR archive (with a compression ratio of 8 percent to 15 percent better than the ZIP format), you'll understand why so many users and developers are making the switch from other compression apps. You might even be prepared to forgive the slightly slower decompression speeds and lack of integrated virus protection.
Beyond its good looks and right-click readiness for basic compression and unzipping, WinRAR offers unpacking support for a large number of archive formats, including ACE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, and ZIP. WinRAR's advanced features are icing on the cake, with Unicode support for international formatting, embedded file comments, repair of damaged archives, archive locking, self-extracting archives, and easy encryption. Anyone seeking an all-in-one archiving solution would be remiss to not evaluate WinRAR.
Watch the CNET video review of WinRAR:
Publisher's description
From RARLAB :WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of RAR Archiver, an archiver and archive manager. RAR files can usually compress content by 8 percent to 15 percent more than ZIP files. WinRAR's main features include strong general and multimedia compression, the ability to process non-RAR archive formats, ZIP compression and decompression, support for long filenames, programmable self-extracting archives (SFX), repair of damaged archives, authenticity verification, embedded file comments, and encryption. Unicode is supported in archive filenames, allowing non-English filenames to be handled painlessly. You can manipulate the parameters of many archives at once and view a volume sequence as a single archive. WinRAR can convert other archive formats to RAR. It supports the Find command, allowing you to search for specified text and files in archives.
Version 3.42 fixes a bug with the Delete command.
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User reviews of WinRAR 3.42
- Average user rating: 4.1 stars out of 1471 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 70 user reviewsSee all 70 user reviews
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60 out of 87 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.42
"Saves space on your hard drive."
Pros: If you have a small hard drive, 40GB,like alot the less expensive computors have, WinRAR compresses your files much more than Winzip, and you'll save valuable space if you store alot of fles. Also,I think it opens twice as fast as Winzip. Plus, if you ever get a file in your e-mail that is RAR, you won't be able to open it without WinRAR. I can't live without it and give it 5 Stars and TWO thumbs UP!
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.42
"MUCH better then WinZip, it supports more formats"
Pros: Supports more formats then WinZip and it is easy to use.
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4 out of 8 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.42
"just what the doc ument ordered"
Pros: excellent product, easy to use
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5 out of 9 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.42
Pros: Better than WinZIP. Dunno what else to say really, I mostly use it for opening, I don't compress all that much.
Cons: Costs money. What can I say? I'm used to free products.
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.42
Pros: Has a nice looking interface, and supports more files than Winzip. Compressess files on my PC very quickly!
- See all 70 user reviews Write review
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