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New Winzip in the Works

flufster writes "Today WinZip released a public beta version of WinZip 10.0, the latest version of the popular archiving software. The biggest change in this version is that the software has finally been broken into two versions - Standard and Professional, offering paying users additional functionality in the Professional version, while allowing others to use the Standard edition without an annoying nag screen. Version 10.0 has a revamped interface designed to mimic XP's Windows Explorer, and claims to zip archives faster. The software now supports the PPMd and bzip2 compression formats, and can burn from zip archives directly to writable optical media such as CDs and DVDs. The main addition to the Pro edition is an automation feature called 'WinZip Job Wizard' which allows scheduled archiving instructions to be set. Almost all the other features we're used to now come completely free in the Standard edition."

39 of 530 comments (clear)

  1. -1, buy an ad. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh wait, you did.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. Obligatory bash.org quote Obligato Obligatory bas by XorNand · · Score: 5, Funny
    what should I give sister for unzipping? Um. Ten bucks? no I mean like, WinZip?
    --
    Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
  3. Superior, free alternative by Solder+Fumes · · Score: 5, Informative

    My favorite window archiving tool: http://www.izarc.org/

    I guess 7-zip is popular too. Regardless, Winzip is yesterday's news.

    1. Re:Superior, free alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      wait, winzip isnt free?

    2. Re:Superior, free alternative by Quarters · · Score: 4, Informative

      IZarc is free and supports pretty much every compression format. But, for me at least, it constantly barfs a hairball when I try to drag-n-drop a file out of an archive that is in a nested folder. The only way to get at the file in that instance is to unpack the entire archive and then navigate to the file in Explorer. Neither WinZip, WinRar, nor 7-Zip have this problem.

  4. Multiple Zip Files by jdvuyk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ability to unzip large groups of ZIP files in one action would be a lovely addition!!! I just use winrar anyway as, although it can be alot more ugly, the methods it uses are much more elegant. My 2c...

  5. What a ridiculous advertisement! by kmmatthews · · Score: 4, Funny

    Great, an AD pretending to be an article. Not only that, it's for a Windows product on a Linux-based website!

    --
    feh. stuff.
    1. Re:What a ridiculous advertisement! by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The stats still show that the vast majority of people who visit Slashdot are running Windows. But yeah, it is an ad.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:What a ridiculous advertisement! by thehemi · · Score: 4, Funny

      But yeah, it is an ad.

      Slashdot becomes a Freshmeat for Windows. Wonderful.

      --
      Scott M
  6. Last chance saloon by oberondarksoul · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've personally always quite liked using WinZip on the PC; yes, Windows has had zip capabilities built-in for a while now (I believe they debuted in Windows ME), but I've still always preferred keeping WinZip around, especially for its disk-spanning capabilities.

    However, with broadband increasing in prevelance, and pendrives and CD writers becoming pretty much the norm now for home users (my parents, never the most technologically literate of users, have their own USB pendrives which they love), not to mention zip integration into just about every common OS now, is there still a place for WinZip? Even if people continue to download it, most people I know who've used it just bypass the nag screens without a second thought - how long can they survive?

    --
    And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
    1. Re:Last chance saloon by Evro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There will always be a place for a format like "ZIP" even if only for its concatenation ability. Downloading 1000 1k files ends up being more time consuming than downloading a single 1 MB file. As for WinZip itself, I don't think most businesses have migrated from Win 2000 yet, and many don't plan to, so there's probably some life left in it.

      --
      rooooar
    2. Re:Last chance saloon by shancock · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree completely. I also have used winzip from day one and this is the first upgrade that my registration number did not work on. Until this point all my upgrades have been free.

      I guess this emphasises the fact that they are going to have to find a new way to generate $.

      I think it may be time for me to switch. I don't feel that I should be paying for a basic utility that comes free with most apps anyway.

  7. So what? by Evro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is this now, Pressreleasedot? I'm running WinZip 8.0 and will never upgrade it for the same reason I'll never upgrade from AIM 4.3, Acrobat 5, and Office 2000: the problem is solved and the old version does everything it should without any new useless cruft (why is Acrobat 7 ~25 megs to read PDF files? And why does it access the Internet at all?).

    Did all the "old school" Slashdot editors leave or something? These new guys they have are pretty lame.

    --
    rooooar
  8. Re:What about rar? by BoomerSooner · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  9. what? by tomstdenis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    tar + bzip2 + mkisofs + cdrecord.

    Wow... now I don't need "professional" tools.

    Seriously, windows users come to expect nothing any more I guess. There are alternatives to "the 10th edition of twenty year old compression algorithms".

    I'm sorry but honestly what the fuck is the real market for Winzip?

    Even when I was a windows user I used Winimp as it is free, compresses better [when making .imp, it also handles zips fine] and doesn't require me to shell out money.

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    1. Re:what? by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 4, Funny

      "I guess that makes me naive for using tools to make my life easier."

      I used tools to make my life easier, but they prefer to be called people, or occasonally minions.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    2. Re:what? by tomstdenis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And defending the status-quo as proper is better?

      I'm not against free-market economies quite the opposite I'm for them. Specifically because I AM for them I despise companies like this that blue button theorem something and then demand to get paid for it.

      There SHOULDN'T be a market for this application and solely because the powers that be want to make it so doesn't mean it's right.

      I mean there was a time when people knew how to use their computers. But now that everything is shiny and impressive corporations don't tend to make products that require customers to think.

      So they do the thinking for them. Except their thinking is how to make profit, not a good product.

      If corporations had customer best interests in mind we would never had seen half the shit that is in Windows [and tools that run in it]. We wouldn't have had WEP or WPA. We wouldn't have 900 page ever-growing drafts for WiMAX, etc, etc, etc.

      There are a lot of "trivial" applications that are getting throw around as the be all. and only through corporate dominance [e.g. MS Office] does it succeed.

      A lot of people say "but can it open .doc files?" as a complaint against OO.o. Or they say "but this device doesn't work in linux", etc. There was a time when application/device developers would strive for compatibility.

      Does linux support your SCSI card? Wrong question. Does your SCSI card support Linux!!! Does your SCSI card follow standards? Is it properly document? etc...

      But people are so void of visible options that they assume that's the way it is, has been and always will. I agree that whatever Dell sells is what people "think exists".

      And it's specifically because companies like Dell, Intel and Microsoft collude that a free-market DOES NOT EXIST.

      Sorry to rant but if you think you live in a free market society you're totally fucking clueless. Your entire life has been mapped and fits within corporate profiles of maximum profitability.

      McDonalds doesn't make a lot of money because they sell things people need. Same applies to the oil companies, microsoft and in this case WinZIP.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  10. Must compete with Microsoft by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now that Microsoft has incorporated an unzip utilitiy in the OS, WinZip can't profit from people who just want to unzip files.

  11. Who needs it by jb.hl.com · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have 7-zip...it handles almost all archives I come across quickly and well, and to boot it just works. Why the hell would I want to go back to WinZip, which from the sounds of it is even more bloated than it was before?

    --
    By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
    1. Re:Who needs it by makomk · · Score: 4, Informative

      Agreed - 7-zip rocks. It seems to be able to open almost every archive format - I even use it under Linux sometimes (via Wine). What I'd like to know is why the hell it took so long for WinZip to get bzip2 support - I've found it really inconvenient, and it seems to be the last archiver to support the format.

    2. Re:Who needs it by elmartinos · · Score: 3, Informative

      You do not need to use wine, there is also a native linux port for 7zip.

  12. Windows Zip utilities, huh? by gusnz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's some good freeware ones:

    7-Zip A free, open source Windows zip utility with support for several archive formats, and comparatively great compression. Small and fast too; it's my personal choice at the moment. IZArc Not open source, but supports a few more formats ICEOWS Formerly ARJFolder, integrates very cleanly into Windows Explorer.

    There's more out there, but really, I can't see how Winzip is as relevant today as it was during the Win3.x days when it was the only good zip GUI out there. I guess scheduling is nice, but then again, all operating systems come with a schedular these days anyway.

  13. And we care because... ? by SirGarlon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why does the Slashdot community, one of the largest Free / Open Source communities on the Net, care when a new proprietary version of some Windows-only software comes out? Find another place to post this nonsense.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
    1. Re:And we care because... ? by thelost · · Score: 3, Insightful

      there's nothing sad about using windows, slashdot is not a linux advocacy site, though many of it's users seems to think so. Slashdot is a news site for technology orientated geeks, windows is a piece of technology and so very much worthy of coverage on slashdot. The parent article though is not news, it's a piece of press pr for a product, dressed up as information on a yesterday piece of tech that no-one really cares about anymore.

      --
      Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
    2. Re:And we care because... ? by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fuck Micro$oft Windoze and fuck revisionists who say this isn't a Linux site!

      You're the revisionist if you want to make it a Linux site.
      The special Linux section of Slashdot is right here.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  14. /. readers should care about WinZip because... by dskoll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... it supports a new "deflate64" compression that is NOT supported by zlib. As a result, clamd chokes on some ZIP files and can't scan them.

    This pain-in-the-@ss aspect of the new Winzip is the most likely thing to affect /. readers.

  15. Re:What about rar? by __aaxwdb6741 · · Score: 3, Funny

    On that note, I think it's about time that I update to my WinRAR to 3.50.
    And, oh, why hasnt slashdot posted news about WinRAR 3.50? They didnt pay enough?

  16. Re:Makes sense. by keraneuology · · Score: 4, Informative
    From TFA:
    Caution, WinZip 10.0, when it is released, will not be a free upgrade. If you are a registered user of a previous version of WinZip and install WinZip 10.0, you will no longer be registered.

    In other words, all of those people who were promised free upgrades way back when are now SOL. Yes, WinZip has the right to change their terms any time they want and have no obligation to continue to provide free upgrades, power to them.

    But I don't have to continue to support their company. Their "upgrade assurance" program is cute, though... for an extra 20% you can receive assurances that if a new version of WinZip comes out within the next year you'll get a copy. They've been averaging a new version what, every two? three? years? How many people are going to fall for that one?

    --
    If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
  17. Re:what the hell by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is slashdot being paid by the winzip authors to post this story ?

    Yes.

    how about posting a story about an opensource/free compression package ?????

    Because no money changed hands.

    At the top of my screen there's a bar with links to "freshmeat, sourceforge, thinkgeek,

    Because money has changed hands. See how easy that was?

    Does Malda and his crew care about that stuff anymore

    More people visiting this site use Windows than Linux (I'm not one of them, but facts are facts). Any journalist/entertainer whose pitches fly counter to what the majority of his audience is interested in catching will fail. Linux adds to the slashdot "geek cachet" -- that's what's being marketed here, not genuine Linux news, for which there are hundreds of supeior sources.

    or is this just a sleazy and easy money making operation for them ?

    Sleazy? From a guy calling himself "Adult Film Producer?" Get a grip, chum. As for "easy," well, they've got to put up with idiots like you and me pissing in their pool 24/7. I doubt anyone could pay me enough to wade through the whining here on a daily basis. Hardly "easy."

  18. WinRAR 3.50 recently released, fyi by simetra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This new release includes "themes", which greatly de-uglifies it. Also, it reads/writes iso's, which is cool. I don't know if winzip does that or not. Winrar has a pretty powerful CLI too, which I use to back up certain directories on my Windows machine through a scheduled task. Winzip I believe has command-line options too.

    Anyway, the new WinRAR is so nice I bought a copy.

    Yes, bought, as in spent money! You can do that, you know.

    --

    "Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
    1. Re:WinRAR 3.50 recently released, fyi by Boarder2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's a little known tool in the Microsoft Download Center that lets you mount an ISO as a virtual CDROM. You can get it here:

      http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6ab d84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcont rolpanel_21.exe

  19. This is new? I've had it since 1997 by mimarsinan · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wrote my first archiver, called CompreXX, back in 1997. It had the exact "new" Explorer interface that's the big deal in WinZip 10 now, 8 years later.

    In 1999 I added plug-in extensibility to the product, so it could be extended to support more archives while keeping the same UI.

    In 2002, I made the product manage archives natively in Windows Explorer itself - just like what Windows XP does for ZIP files, except for all archive types (that plug-ins support) and all Windows platforms. Give WinZip another 8 years and they'll figure that one out.

    CompreXX right now natively compresses ZIP, RAR, ACE, SIT, 7ZIP (7ZIP has the best compression), and 28 total archive formats. It extracts 48. Of course, because I do not have a multimillion dollar marketing budget, there is nothing I can do to get the word out about it.

    And reading about WinZip's revolutionary "new" features, especially on Slashdot, is really depressing.

    1. Re:This is new? I've had it since 1997 by mskfisher · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here it is in clickable form:

      http://www.CompreXX.com/

      --
      0x0D 0x0A
    2. Re:This is new? I've had it since 1997 by Call+Me+Black+Cloud · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Here's why WinZip is more popular:
      1. It's been around a lot longer than your software. The earliest reference I found in Google groups was 1991.
      2. Winzip is free. What's that you say? It's not? I think I've seen a registered copy once or twice at work in the last 15 years. Winzip allows you to use the trial version forever. Does your software allow that?

      From what I've read, though, you may be in luck. To increase revenue the new owners of the WinZip product will be stricter about trial periods. I'm quite sure they don't have a multimillion dollar budget either. They have momentum; they have users. Search google for "use winzip" and see how many pages read, "to open the file, use winzip or other program..."

      To start, why not put your URL with your name or in a sig? If you overlook such simple things how good can your software be?
  20. Is there a +1 Irony token? by KitesWorld · · Score: 3, Funny

    We're is a contraction of 'we are', and is perfectly correct. There's nothing worse than trying to be a grammar Nazi and getting it wrong :)

  21. 7-Zip by BinLadenMyHero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you tried 7-Zip?

    1. Re:7-Zip by m50d · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have in a pretty similar situation, I was compressing 1.4gb of various binary data in the hope of getting it onto a cdr. Zip and gzip I didn't even bother with (no, ok, I did try them, they sucked, about 1.2gb). 7-zip and ace were better but pretty bad, about 8-900mb each. Arj got it down to about 706mb, just too much without overburning. Rar blew them all away, compressed it down to just over 550mb. Took two hours to do though.

      --
      I am trolling
    2. Re:7-Zip by Lagged2Death · · Score: 5, Informative

      I believe RAR does what they call "solid archiving," which means that a single compression dictionary is created for the entire archive.

      ZIP doesn't do that; each file in a ZIP archive is compressed individually, with a separate compression dictionary. That hurts the compression ratio for ZIP archives that contain many files, particularly many small files, particularly many similar small files, like source code, for example. But it does mean that archive operations (like extracting or updating individual files or and adding files to or removing files from an archive) are fast and simple.

      It's possible, in some cases, to dramatically increase the compression ratio ZIP achieves by ZIPing twice, emulating the "solid archive" method. (This is also what using .tar.gz does.) For the first ZIP, specify "no compression" (sometimes called "archive only") for the degree of compression desired. No compression dictionary will be created. Then ZIP that uncompressed ZIP file, using maximum compression this time. Since you're compressing just one file, only a single compression dictionary will be created. Especially for files that have a lot of similarity to each other (like human-language text or computer-language text), there's a big savings in using a single dictionary.

      I tried this with some source code archives and reduced ZIPs from (IIRC) ~150KB to ~90KB. Not really a worthwhile absolute savings, these days, but a huge improvement, percentage-wise. I also tried this with the Windows distribution of Emacs (which is distributed as .tar.gz.). ZIP managed ~17MB, double-ZIP managed ~12MB - slightly smaller than the .tar.gz distro, in fact.

      Doing this is a little clumsy, but it can offer a much-improved compression ratio in a format that virtually every Windows user already has access to.

  22. Hmm by Sonic+McTails · · Score: 3, Informative

    While it's more common on Macintosh, I use Stuff Expander for Windows. It opens almost anything thrown at it, and it doesn't need the proper extension so it can open mystery files as well. It works in the background and the only time you see any windows from it when you explicately open it, or when it's decompressing.

    I used to use WinZip back in the day though, and it was realible, and quick, so maybe it's time to re-evaluate it.

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    This signature was left intentionally blank.