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For archival purposes, I've started using WinRAR ( http://www.rarlabs.com/ ) with the file authenticity and recovery options checked. Unfortunately none of this helps you now, but it will help in the future at least...

It may not be an Open Source license, but it source is available and it is portable. ftp://ftp.rarlabs.com/rar/unrarsrc-3.7.3.tar.gz.

Or you could just get WinRar. Free upgrades and a better format to boot.

And if all you need is to be able to read RAR archives, then you can download free-as-in-beer extraction programs for most major platforms here. There's even source code available.*

People are welcome not to like WinRAR for being a proprietary product using proprietary algorithms, but nobody can complain that RAR archives are inaccessible to them.

* Under a slightly restrictive license, but it's still source code.

I have tested almost every other app people have suggested to me and WinRAR still leads the way.

http://www.rarlabs.com/ - unzips a ZIP file in 2 clicks and handles about 10 other formats, and also has its own very good RAR format. Why bother paying for Winzip? I'm surprised people use it over winrar.

Or you could just get WinRar. Free upgrades and a better format to boot.

You could just use winrar.

No, not everyone uses WinRAR. However, WinRAR is probably the most well known and it's relatively easy to use. Plus, just like UltimateZIP, it can open up a variety of formats.

I find that more technically-abled people are familiar with and have installed WinRAR or the unix-variant based RAR on their system.

Of course, such people are less likely to be taken in by a virus, so I'm forced to believe that this new spin on virus writing isn't going to be very effective.

Similarly, I suppose virus-writers could rename their .exe file to be .txt and leave instructions within the .txt file to rename the file to .exe and from there ask them to execute it but the people that would understand those instructions would not be likely to follow them.

Also of note is that I install Windows Media Player 9 because there is no way to uninstall WMP 8, but there is an undocumented way to uninstall WMP 9.

I also tune the services on the computer to only what is needed... This includes disabling the System Restore service. The only time I've found that the restore service would have been useful is when the computer fails to boot into windows. Unfortunately MS didn't have the foresight to allow restore points to be used from the install cd so the feature is useless.

7zip lacks multi-part archiving with error recovery volumes, or any other kind of error recovery information, so I use WinRAR instead. You get what you pay for with WinRAR.

WinRAR
Ad Muncher
Opera
Foobar2000
Paint Shop Pro
the current Kazaa Lite variant of my choice
OO.o

That's all I ask of my Windows machine.

1. FireFox, how else am I going to find and download the rest?
2. AVG AV, so that the next 8 actually are what I want.
3. Net Transport, to get the next 7 faster.
4. WinRAR, some of the rest require extraction, and whatever one might say about WinRAR, I prefer it.
   
5. WinAmp, so that I can listen to RadioStorm while I wait for the rest to download.
   
6. Trillian Pro, so I can tell everyone I am reinstalling.
7. NoteTab Pro, I paid for it for a reason after all.
8. OpenOffice.org, so that I don't have to wait an hour for it to download when I need to use it later.
9. Scorched Earth 3D, for a little fun.
10. Synergy , check it out if you wanna know.

These are not in the right order, just threw em up there as i thought of them.

According to this apge, RAR uses AES-128 encryption (see the last paragraph).

I couldn't care less about WinZip. WinRAR came in version 3.30 today, for the same price as WinZip and a lot more features. IMHO, it would be better than WinZip even if it didn't support RAR, simply from its arhiver support and features. :-)

That it happens to use the superior RAR format makes the decision easy for me. We're installing it at our company too, since it isn't even a hard to use archiver for geeks in any way. I know about for example bzip2 and 7-zip, but 7-zip still seems like a rather immature archiver, although it's interesting. The problem is the lack of a good feature set besides the core archiving part. And the official bzip2 package compiled for Windows doesn't come with a GUI so that makes it a bit less useful to me at least, especially when RAR has a comparable compression ratio. Sure, I can use a command line archiver, but I wouldn't like to. :-)

The only downside I can see is that RAR is a closed source format, with only the decompressor being open.

Sometimes, I think it's better to not have two different companies trying to get control over a single format. :-P

I couldn't care less about WinZip. WinRAR came in version 3.30 today, for the same price as WinZip and a lot more features. IMHO, it would be better than WinZip even if it didn't support RAR, simply from its arhiver support and features. :-)

That it happens to use the superior RAR format makes the decision easy for me. We're installing it at our company too, since it isn't even a hard to use archiver for geeks in any way. I know about for example bzip2 and 7-zip, but 7-zip still seems like a rather immature archiver, although it's interesting. The problem is the lack of a good feature set besides the core archiving part. And the official bzip2 package compiled for Windows doesn't come with a GUI so that makes it a bit less useful to me at least, especially when RAR has a comparable compression ratio. Sure, I can use a command line archiver, but I wouldn't like to. :-)

The only downside I can see is that RAR is a closed source format, with only the decompressor being open.

Sometimes, I think it's better to not have two different companies trying to get control over a single format. :-P

RarLabs.com

I love it, use it and bought it!

Come on now, Winzip, why not just drop the whole .zip compression altogether and do .rar instead? Not only is it much better, but you could very easily change your name from Winzip to Winra... oh, wait...

Why would anyone use that crappy winzip program when there are so much better ones like WinRAR that are able to compress a lot better and are fully compatible with zip and most other compression formats?
I havent had a copy of winzip since the glorious days of windows 3.1, and even then I converted everything to RAR, which I've been using since 1994.
Of course, there are even better programs than RAR in terms of raw compression, but I'm a rabid RAR zealot :^)

Why would anyone use that crappy winzip program when there are so much better ones like WinRAR that are able to compress a lot better and are fully compatible with zip and most other compression formats?
I havent had a copy of winzip since the glorious days of windows 3.1, and even then I converted everything to RAR, which I've been using since 1994.
Of course, there are even better programs than RAR in terms of raw compression, but I'm a rabid RAR zealot :^)

Why would anyone use that crappy winzip program when there are so much better ones like WinRAR that are able to compress a lot better and are fully compatible with zip and most other compression formats?
I havent had a copy of winzip since the glorious days of windows 3.1, and even then I converted everything to RAR, which I've been using since 1994.
Of course, there are even better programs than RAR in terms of raw compression, but I'm a rabid RAR zealot :^)

Yes, Zip support is built into WinXP, but utilities like WinZip, PicoZip and WinRar will still be needed by many people. There are tons of very useful features that are just not available in the Zip support in XP. You might want to take a look at the features list on those sites to get an idea.