One of the best-known Windows utilities, archive creator and manager WinZip updates to version 14 with the future in mind--the future of Windows. The new features in WinZip 14 are aimed squarely at Windows 7 users, with extensive support for Windows 7 libraries, recent archives in the jumplist, and tool tweaks to bring them more in line with the new operating system. Certain file types can be previewed from within an archive in Windows Explorer, and basic touch screen support.
WinZip 14 includes extensive Windows 7 support.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)With archive previews, you can click on an archive and the files it contains will appear in list form in the preview window. The jumplist features your most recently opened archives from across your system, tasks such as opening an existing archive, creating a new one, creating a new WinZip job, and burning a new ZIP to CD or DVD.
Included in those WinZip jobs are linking Windows 7's libraries to ZIP files, making it possible to keep up-to-date archives of specific files or entire libraries. The job scheduler and automatic e-mail options are restricted to WinZip Pro, but it's still handy to be able to create and run library archives.
WinZip 14 also includes minor security enhancements. New automatic wiping keeps confidential data secret by "shredding" the temporary file that WinZip creates by default whenever it opens an archive. This prevents those temporary files from being recovered. The shredding uses U.S. Department of Defense standard DoD 5220.22-M.
WinZip 14 archive preview in Windows 7
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)WinZip 14 now also supports the built-in AES encryption in Intel-based computers, speeding up the time it takes to encrypt an archive. This builds on the encryption overhaul from last year's version, which included customizable password requirements and enhancements for determining how, if at all, encryption would be enforced.
WinZip 14 retains its large feature set, including drag-and-drop support, content-sensitive previews, better JPEG compression that can see JPEG-only archives up to 20 percent smaller, Zip from Camera, and the deep context menu support enables you to perform most of WinZip's functions on the fly. Zip from Camera, and automated archiving for backup purposes, are limited to the paid upgrade, as is rotating and resizing of images within an archive. Keep in mind that multitouch support on Windows 7 is limited to rotating pictures previewed from WinZip archives.
While installing you should keep an eye out for the Google Toolbar and the "WinZip Computing" that collects anonymous usage data--both are opt-out screens. Even with these drawbacks and the useful features that are restricted to WinZip Pro, WinZip 14 remains among the best compression programs available, providing all the features necessary to create easy backups, compress e-mail files, and manage downloaded files from the Internet.
I have thousands of e-mail messages in my corporate Outlook in-box, and thousands more in Gmail and in my ancient Hotmail account. MailStore Home is a free program that can archive them all locally, and display those archives in an interface that reads like your Outlook in-box.
Why use it? You can clear away old messages and attachments, but easily search to find them again when that inevitable moment arrives. Until universal offline in-boxes like Yahoo's Zimbra Desktop start addressing consumers on a wider scale, MailStore Home is also a good way to read mail offline in areas of spotty Wi-Fi, or to use as a de facto message backup.
MailStore Home's search pane includes attachments and repeat queries.
(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)MailStore Home can archive a pretty impressive list of accounts and protocols, including Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft Exchange, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Gmail, Windows Live Mail, IMAP, POP3. It also supports .EML files. It largely resembles Microsoft Outlook's layout with a side bar on the left--complete with folder tree and search field--and a large reading pane on the right. There are also some small navigational icons along the top that you can use to jump to archiving, burning archives to disk, advanced search, and tools.
The program's management is straightforward. Buttons on the start screen replicate the navigational icons up top, and there are also some stats, like your oldest and newest messages and the total size of your archive. When you archive an in-box, a wizard walks you through special configuration steps and lets you enter folders to archive or exclude if you want some backed up, but not all. MailStore Home skips your spam, trash, and junk folders by default, and it checks for duplicate messages while going about its business.
E-mail search is one feature of note. Using the advanced search screen, you can drill down to specifics--dates, folders, even the contents of e-mail attachments. You can also search for messages with or without attachments, and save queries to rerun the report at a later time. MailStore Home supports Boolean search terms. When you've found your message, you'll have management options like opening, saving, and exporting. Search was speedy and accurate in our tests. Though processing took a few long seconds, we were able to reply to archived Gmail messages via Outlook.
The freeware version for consumers doesn't do it all. There's no auto-archiving or scheduling for starters, so archiving is a manual activity. Initial scanning also takes a long time, and subsequent archives of the same in-box (click "run" to rearchive) start over from scratch instead of offering you the option to pick up from the most recent message date. We'd like to see more, and more nimble, filters on that left sidebar, like to filter only e-mails with attachments. MailStore Home also restricts you to three account profiles, which isn't especially useful if you've got more active accounts than that. Despite these drawbacks, MailStore Home offers a fine free solution for storing e-mail from multiple in-boxes and searching through the archives.
Related story: Three killer Outlook add-ons for office workers
Wednesday is tax day, so I thought you might be able to use some free music. I don't mean questionably legal file trades or streams or random MP3s delivered via Seeqpod or some other search engine--I'm talking about the Free Music Archive, which launched in beta over the weekend.
Often, sites with tons of free music have a low-quality bar--either they cater to beginning bands, or they're used to promote leftovers and outtakes that artists couldn't otherwise sell. But at first glance, FMA appears to be different.
It's curated by serious music fans, including New Jersey's WFMU, the undisputed national leader in unusual music, as well as Seattle's frequently awesome KEXP, and includes lots of live-in-studio performances on these and other stations.
There are artists you might actually have heard of, like Robyn Hitchcock, Daniel Johnston, and Vivian Girls. And, keeping with WFMU's heritage, the "Experimental" category isn't just an afterthought but a rather major part of the site, with a whopping 1,340 downloads. All songs are licensed for a wide array of uses, including sampling and remixes.
Can't get enough? Want new downloads as soon as they become available? Try subscribing to the site's Twitter feed.
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Novice-friendly but with features for the expert and free archiving tools rarely cover all those bases, but PeaZip and PeaZip Portable hit back-to-back home runs.
Operating PeaZip is as easy as dragging files. Drop a ZIP file on the interface and PeaZip goes into decompression mode. Drop a regular file and it opens the archiving screen. Well-labeled buttons and simple functions make both processes quick and painless. Adding files and folders is also quickly accomplished using function buttons and traditional file browse tools.
Novice users will be able to use default settings to create well-made archives. Experienced users will like the easily set options. Each well-designed interface includes option tabs that contain simple pull-downs, radio buttons, and text boxes to set compression levels, methods, dictionaries, and even encryption. Most users will find this app one of the most simple to set precisely to their preferences.
Anyone looking for a small and useful archiving tool should give PeaZip a test. Most won't continue their search.
UPDATED: Clarified the end result of AppCompactor on a standard program.
When you gotta go, advanced users should strongly consider using AppCompactor to stay mobile. Just introduced by John T. Haller of PortableApps, this portable power user's right-hand man crushes program files, often shaving 50 percent off the size of a disk.
AppCompactor lets you roll your own portable apps.
(Credit: CNET Networks)AppCompactor melds 7-Zip and UPX to compress and archive DLLs, EXEs, JARs, and other files essential for running any program into a package that doesn't need to be unarchived to run. Programs that have been compacted run smoothly from a flash drive or other on-the-go storage devices. Programs run through AppCompactor are not, however, truly portable in the sense that they are self-contained programs--they're just significantly smaller.
AppCompactor has already been in use by Haller's PortableApps.com to assist in creating Firefox Portable, Pidgin Portable, and other portable programs. This means that it won't do any good to compress already compacted apps that have used AppCompactor. Theoretically, it might work on portable versions that were not created with it.
When you run AppCompactor, it will ask you to point it at a program directory. From there, you can choose the type of compression you want to run. NRV2E is the default setting, with other choices including NRV2D, LZMA, BRUTE, and a decompress option. You can also opt out of compressing JAR and ZIP files, although the default is to compress them down. As the app runs, it opens a DOS window that shows you the progress of the compression cycle. This should help observant users with fast eyes to keep track of any errors that occur.
AppCompactor shaved off 50 percent of Firefox 3.
(Credit: CNET Networks)As recommended, I found that saving the compressed program output to the hard drive and then copying to a USB key gave me faster results than outputting directly to the flash drive.
The benefits of compressing such files should be obvious, but this is not a program to treat cavalierly. When using it, it's essential to read through the instructions beforehand. Choosing to compact the main program executable can result in rendering the compacted program inoperable. In other words, do not compact C:/Program Files/Firefox/Firefox.exe, for example. C:/Program Files/Firefox/Files would be fine, though.
If you're interested in AppCompactor, you can post your compression percentages in the comments below.
This file-compression tool offers all the bells and whistles required by power users, while keeping the program easy enough for novices. Quick Zip's button and pull-down menu helps users by ghosting unavailable commands until they're applicable. The multipane interface makes it easy to see files, folders, and archive properties. An extensive Help manual should give inexperienced users everything needed to be program power users.
Numerous options and methods to use this application means a steep learning curve for those who want to master every feature. However, operating Quick Zip can be as easy as dragging files to the interface for quick compression. In a testament to the program's flexibility, power users could play select multimedia files still stored in archive files.
Quick Zip compresses well and fast, and offers much to advnaced users. Newbies should appreciate the default drag-and-drop operation, making Quick Zip practically a no-brainer.
ExtractNow could use a bit of sprucing up. The dead-simple and cheetah-quick installation brings you to an expanse of white that sits on top of four buttons. That's it. It's not an interface that sells the feature set, but it's the features that you're going to be most interested in.
The program should appeal to users who handle a high volume of archives, because all it does is extract archive contents. The four buttons, Settings, History, Clear, and Extract, lay out the basics. Click Settings and a window pops up to entice you with options. From the boilerplate specials like Always on Top or Start with Windows to more detailed customizations such as delineating a default extraction directory, setting file extensions to ignore, and adjusting post-extraction behavior, ExtractNow gives users as much flexibility as possible when it comes to batch archive extractions. You can, for instance, set it to delete archives after their files have been extracted.
It is not an archiver, though, and won't be able to replace your favorite archiver. But if you're more about receiving than giving when it comes to ZIPs, RARs, and TARs, ExtractNow can save you a massive amount of time.
If you're looking for one tool that can handle a myriad of compression methods, from RAR and ZIP to TAR and TGZ and nearly 30 other formats, ALZip just might be for you. In fact, archive format support is ALZip's forte. It'll even open ISO and other CD images. All the usual archive application options are here, as well: context menu additions, password protections, virus scanner integration, and assistance in creating self-extracting archives.
The interface looks modern and is well-designed, with archive contents displayed as icons, in a list, or in a detailed spreadsheet-style grid. There are 14 criteria by which you can sort files, the program supports 21 languages, there's a test function to make sure the archive works, and you can save in eight formats. Some people will most likely not be impressed by the bird-egg icons, but I thought they were a subtle way to differentiate the app from its competitors.
This program leaves a slightly larger footprint than WinZip, but since we're talking about a difference of 2MB I think it's worth giving ALZip a chance to fly.
Although it's ancient in Internet years, WinZip is still up and kicking. Among the various improvements and tweaks, the latest upgrade to Version 12 includes one massive reinvigorating feature: the WinZip folks have figured out how to compress JPEGs without sacrificing image quality.
WinZip 12 delivers on its promise of lossless JPEG compression.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The details on exactly how this is done remain a secret for now, although WinZip has promised to open up its compression algorithms as they've done in the past. On the user end of things, this means that ZIP files containing JPEGs will be more than just bundles of your photos--the archives will actually be smaller in size.
To test it out, I wanted to create a massive archive. I used all the screenshots I've taken of programs since January 2007, more than 550 images that worked out to be about 70MB uncompressed. Keep in mind that the issue here isn't basic compression, but lossless compression, where the image quality in the JPEG doesn't turn south.
That test provided 24 percent space savings, toward the high-end of WinZip's predictions of between 20 percent and 25 percent. This only works with JPEG images. GIFs, TIFs, PNGs, and others will be compressed using standard algorithms, and so it's unlikely that you'll see a drastic savings in space with them.
Some of the other new features in WinZip 12 were nearly as interesting. The Pro version of WinZip offers a Zip from Camera option. This cuts out multiple steps and instead lets users archive their images as they get transferred onto their computer. There's also a new tool, Send Selected, that lets you e-mail archives as they get created. However, this is WinZip playing catch-up--other compression tools, like 7-Zip or WinRAR, have offered this for some time.
This latest version includes better encryption control that should appeal to system administrators, where they can determine the encryption method or specify if one is even to be used. Both professionals and home users will probably like that you can now create new folder architectures within a ZIP once it's been created. WinZip also now autodetects the file type in Smart View, which will then show thumbnails if the archive is made up of images, for example.
Without a doubt, the lossless JPEG compression is the big draw here. The minor improvements to the workflow and security settings are important, but not must-haves unless you're a die-hard WinZip fan.
When all you've got is a hammer, every problem looks suspiciously like a nail. RarZilla is a great little utility for automatically "unraring" RAR archives, but it's incompatible with any other archive format. Depending on what you're looking for, the program--which is also available in a portable version--is either just the tool you need or woefully inadequate.
The program does a wonderful job of unzipping--sorry, unraring--RARs, and it provides three methods for achieving that lofty goal. You can select the "RarZilla!" option from the context menu associated with any RAR file in Windows Explorer, you can double-click the RAR, or you can drag and drop the RAR onto the program interface. To aid in the last one, the program is permanently set to live on top unless you minimize it. I found that extremely annoying, but your mileage may vary. It extracts the compressed files to the same folder in which the RAR lives.
RarZilla is squarely aimed at those people who predominantly use the RAR format, but I'd like to see the program support more formats before bestowing higher praise. I can't think of anybody who uses only one kind of archive exclusively. Fans of other formats should look elsewhere for an extractor or a dual-purpose archiving/unarchiving tool.
