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IMHO Winzip peaked at around version 5 when they finally introduced long filename support. Everything after that was more of the same, nothing really new. Sure, this "archiving faster" crap sound cool but is it really faster? And do the customer really wanna fork over cash for a 3% (or whatever) increase in zipping?

Also, I'm rather tired of using fifty billion archivers and have therefore switched to PowerArchiver which does a good job at most every format.

Powerarchiver

Yeah it's payware, but then again, so is Winzip. Since this whole /. article was free advertising for them, I don't mind posting a link to Powerarchiver, which I find superior.

PowerArchiver has become my replacement for Winzip. I registered Winzip years ago, so it was tough to admit defeat, but I've now replaced it with PA and haven't looked back. PA costs $20 and supports every format I've thrown at it, including rar, 7zip, and many installation EXEs that contain compressed data (WZ did this too). It also has batch compression and decompression, which is great for handling emulation ROMs.

I SysAdmin a significantly sized heterogeneous network and to my dismay, I often have to set up new Windows machines and/or reinstall Windows machines.

As an aside, in sysadmin-land, the general rule is to reinstall a machine after someone leaves and/or every two-three years max. Any longer than that and the machine's OS & registry gets too clogged up with crap (among other things) that the machine goes so slow and a complete & clean reinstall is the only way to really regain that lost productivity.

Anyhow, the first 10 or so programs I install on these (primarily w2k) machines are as follows:

• Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (if you don't install this from a cd before you put the machine on the network, you will get a virus).
• Windows Critical & OS Updates
• Netscape
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Sophos AV (served over the network via EMLibrary)
• Office 2002/XP including all service packs
• PuTTY
• WinSCP
• Winzip or PowerArchiver
• Shockwave (since I don't allow user admin rights on most clients)
• Google Toolbar (just a convenience)
• Real Player
• ABC Image Browser

Encryption of files and archives using 5 different methods: Blowfish (128-bit), DES (64-bit), Triple DES (128-bit), AES 128-bit, and AES 256-bit.

That, plus all this here would be why I use Power Archiver.

I hope all you Winders users know that PowerArchiver blows the doors off of the WinZip and PK offerings, despite what your IT department installed on your company-issued machine.

They do. Its called PowerArchiver, from the website of the same name...

Ok... Powerarchiver.com

Sheesh... Don't you people realize that most programs have websites that are the name of the product by now? I'm pretty sure Iâ(TM)ve heard it called the "Nomenclature of Programs on the Internet" once or twice before.

If WinZip gets annoying then give PowerArchiver a try.

It's a free (beer) clone and I've sucessfully used as a replacement on Windows for a long time. There are no annoying nag screens at all.

It's self extractor is also freeware.

mIRC is "nice", but compared to BitchX it's really annoying and lacking in functionality. blahblahblah.

--- posting anonymously to preserve the rain-forest.