winzip/winrar ?

[robin8495]

Which is the best;- 'Winzip' or 'Winrar' and is there a difference ?

[SMP]

Hubby who is a pooter wiz says Winrar cos supports more file formats than Winzip

[robin8495]

Thanks SMP, its 'winrar' for me.

[ACtheTROLL]

I used winzip for years .... but not now - winrar does have more of everything

[beso]

Neither. You are supposed to buy a licence for either of them.

7zip is open source, available for virtually any platform and totally free. It can decompress any of the formats supported by the others. It can compress to zip and some others plus has its own superior compession format.

[beso]

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

[fo3nix]

7zip is good because it deals with all the popular formats winzip and winrar do, but is open source as beso says.

But personally, I think the interface for winrar is better than 7zip's.

Still, 7zip is free and worth a try before winrar or winzip.

(Note though that I wouldn't use 7zip's format -- stick to .zip or if you have to, .rar. 7z just isn't popular.)

[ACtheTROLL]

Forgot about 7zip - better compression .... but as fo3 says less widely accepted ... tends to be used by the techies and the game ripping types (as does uha)

I'd probably add a couple of other packages as well to make a solid compression toolkit .... but that's getting into quite specialist areas and needs.

for an all round winner my star would still be winrar.
it's ability to create grown up self extracting files is invaluable

[robin8495]

Many thanks to you all, I will take the advice Given that it would seem to me to be the best Program, as I said earlier Its "Winrar for me"
Again 'Thanks to you all'

[LucianaScott]

i have to agree with beso: 7zip "archiver" is the best for me. it supports all those zip, rar formats, it's free and it has simple user interface.

[MeltonR]

I personally prefer Winzip to Winrar, don't know why, I guess I just got used to it. I think both are good though. If you would like to get the archiver for free download Winzip here: http://freearchiver.org/
I use 7-zip at home by the way, it's rather good too.