Are you tired of waiting for the nag-message to disappear when you use WinZip to decompress a ZIP file? 7-Zip is an excellent free and open source alternative to commercial file compression and archiving tools. It’s very easy to use and compatible with pretty much all of the archive formats you’re likely to come across:
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
What’s more, the developers claim a 2-10% improvement in compression ratio over commercial alternatives. We’ve been using this tool ourselves for quite a while and can’t recommend it highly enough - it’s an essential tool for any PC user.
You can download a copy from the project website at: www.7-zip.org