Chances are you deal with zip files all the time. And they can be so annoying if you use them with the Microsoft extractor because it takes so long. 7-Zip is a great, free alternative program.
7-Zip is able to compress and extract 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR files and only extract ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z files. It is faster than the Windows extractor, especially if you are still using Windows XP. In Vista and 7 the speed became better, but for large files it is still not as fast as it can be. Different compression ratios can be used as well as the ability to password protect an archive.
7-Zip integrates into Windows Explorer, letting you compress and decompresses files from the context menu.
Written by Christopher
Topics: Featured, Utilities