What is WinRAR, and y is it better than WinZip?

[SouljaAC]

Title says all. Holler back.

 

[BeauJangles]

winrar is another piece of archiving software. IMO it's much better than winzip for a few reasons.
1. It can read almost every type of compressed file.
2. It can read files that are split up (ie... filepart.01, filepart.02, filepart.03)
3. It's fast

 

[Sid59]

long love winzip. the last time i used winzip was in 1998.

 

[CraigRT]

I use WinRAR over WinZIP now all the time.... i like it alot better.

for the above reasons courtesy of BlinderBomber 😀

 

[glugglug]

1. handles almost every type of compressed file plus it handles other archive types like .iso, .cab, .uue, .tar, and .jar files
2. Much tighter compression. RAR files being 20% smaller than a ZIP of the same data is common, for some types like Excel spreadsheets 50% smaller than a best compressed ZIP is not unusual.
3. Faster than WinZIP when dealing with ZIP files.
4. Optional recovery blocks so no data is lost if a disk block containing part of the archive goes bad (You can set the %age of redundancy relative to total archive size)
5. Advanced features to get even better compression ratios like special audio and bitmap compression (often compresses truecolor bitmaps losslessly smaller than JPG) and solid archives
6. Auto-split archives to segments of desired size (i.e. 700MB for CDs). The command line zip does this too, but I don't think the GUI WinZIP does.

 

[Spyro]

WinRAR is better, in many ways. In other words, I agree with glugglug.

 

[SouljaAC]

if i have winxp home, for zip files i dont need winzip or winrar?

 

[Renob]

Is there a free version of WinRAR??? and if so does it have spyware??

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Renob
Is there a free version of WinRAR??? and if so does it have spyware??

WinRAR, is shareware, but as far as I've noticed, it doesn't have a cuttoff period (just an annoying pop-up everytime you start the program), and no it doesn't have any spyware.

 

[Bulldog13]

Originally posted by: SouljaAC
if i have winxp home, for zip files i dont need winzip or winrar?

True. You can open .zip files inherently with windows xp.

I don't believe it handles .rar files. As previously stated .rar files have better compression rates as compared to .zip files.

How do .ace files compare compression wise to .rar and .zip?

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Renob
Is there a free version of WinRAR??? and if so does it have spyware??

There's a trial version, but the trial version doesn't shut off when the time expires... you just get an annoying popup asking if you want to register every time you open something with it.

 

[EeyoreX]

I like Power Archiver better than both WinZip or WinRAR.

- Supports ZIP, CAB, LHA (LZH), TAR, TAR.GZ,
TAR.BZ2, BH, RAR, ARJ, ARC, ACE, ZOO, GZ,
BZIP2, XXE, MIME, and UUE file formats
- Includes an internal viewer that supports TXT,
RTF, BMP, ICO, WMF, and EMF files
- Support for unlimited size ZIP archives
- Create ZIP and CAB self-extracting archives
- Repair corrupted ZIP archives
- Extract multiple archives at the same time
- Create automated file backup scripts
- Upload archives directly to FTP sites
- Encrypt archives using 4 different methods

\Dan

 

[Batman5177]

i second PowerArchiver, it opens everything and it's small!

 

[XBoxLPU]

I like Winrar also

Don't forget you can Un-zip .exe files with it

 

[OrganizedChaos]

winrar is what people used before 7zip

 

[sandorski]

Winrar is what Winzip should have been.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: sandorski
Winrar is what Winzip should have been.

true, so true.

 

[calpha]

2nd all teh reasons already said above.

I will note however, that there have been a small number of instances where I'm trying to use winrar to unzip a .zip file, and it bombs.....and winzip worked fine.

If that weren't my experience in the past, I woulnd't even have winzip installed.

 

[jfall]

I have been using Winrar for a long time now, I use the built in XP unzipper for .zip files and winrar for everything else, no complaints