- Feb 18, 2006
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I'm looking for a freeware RAR program, I've been using the winrar trial for awhile but the messages are getting annoying.
# Supported formats:
* Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
* Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
# For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Most, if not all, packing software supports ZIP files though. WinZIP, WinRAR, and 7z all support it and to my knowledge are the most popular compression utilities, so if you really need to get something compressed to someone, .ZIP is always an option.afaik 7-zip will UNRAR, but doesn't create RARs.
I did some testing a while back and, if I recall correctly, WinRAR turned up marginally smaller packages when compressing from larger files. The lead did go over a few MB at some point. That was years ago though, I still chose 7z and have been with it since. In summation: +1 7z.Also its compression / speed isn't really any better than 7-zip's own free algorithms in most cases, so I see little reason why RAR is popular as compared to truly open/free alternatives.
Yeah, 7zip is great. I still use WinRar though and never see any messages when I uncompress something. I just us the right-click context menu to open things and it works without ever seeing a trial period over message.Originally posted by: mentalcrisis00
ya I'm not even worried about created RAR archives, I'm just interested in opening them! A lot the freeware downloads I get are in RAR archives. I see RAR a lot more than ZIP these days for some reason. I have created a few RAR archives just because it was handy and was sending tiny exe files to friends, gmail won't send exe files.
Anyhow thanks for the heads up I'll try out 7zip
Originally posted by: Pabster
I bought WinRAR years ago. It's worth every penny.
7-Zip is fine but IMHO a subpar product in comparison.
Originally posted by: lxskllr
Why do you say that? I'm not a heavy user of archives, but it seems to me 7Zip does everything needed, plus it's available as a free download so people aren't stuck downloading shareware to open a archive you've sent them.
Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
I like Izarc as well but it's a little slow.