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Gentlemen,

Whilst this thread might be more appropriate in the General Discussion forum, I thought I could rely upon the collective wisdom of the WITP:AE "family" for some considered advice. Besides, I rather suspect most of you only visit this forum.[:)]

Some years ago, when my OS was WinME, I relied upon filzip for my ZIP/RAR extracting needs. That old rig has now been replaced and my current OS is Win7, 64 bit.

So my question is, which free extraction utility do you recommend. My needs are extremely modest eg needing to extract the odd patch, thus a power application is not necessary, nor as I understand it, is a 64 bit compatible completely necessary eg an inability to simply right click on a compressed file would not be a problem.

So any suggestions? The latest iteration for filzip dates from mid 2006. Is it usuable with Win7? Is TUGZip a better option even though it last iteration is mid 2008, predating Win7. Any views on ZipGenius or any other utility?

Thanking in advance,

Alfred

Hi all,

You can always rely on WinZIP and WinRAR... I use them both on 32 bit and 64 bit MS Windows platforms and never had any problems...


Leo "Apollo11"

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

Freeware, no ads, no registration.

ORIGINAL: VSWG

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

Freeware, no ads, no registration.

Absolutely the best. Get it.

Definitely. Has every feature you could ever want, and costs nothing.

Second the 7-zip. It's very highly regarded.

Also, SecureZip is free for non-commercial use. The difference between it and WinZip (also free for non-commercial use) is that you can optionally encrypt files (the file names in the .zip are still visible).

Get both.

7-zip is the best compression program available that is also free. It will handle a variety of formats and I find it's GUI far easier to use than Winzip. I have 7-zip on all my personal machines. My company has a Winzip license, but I still installed 7-zip on my laptop.

Winzip is not free. The trial version is for evaluation purposes only. If you keep it on your PC for more than 45 days then you are in violation of the license agreement. Regardless, try 7-zip, you will not be disappointed. It is available in 64 bit and fully supports Windows 7.

ORIGINAL: Caltone

Winzip is not free. The trial version is for evaluation purposes only. If you keep it on your PC for more than 45 days then you are in violation of the license agreement.

This is not true. It continues to be free for non-commercial use. They cover that right on their web site and encourage free use for non-commercial purposes.

Thank you gentlemen. That is one of the most emphatic endorsements of software I have ever seen.

A couple of follow up questions.

(a) which 7-Zip version is recommended: 4.65 or the 9.15 beta

(b) just download the .msi version for my Win7

(c) I presume it is safe to place 7-Zip in my Program Folder rather than creating a dedicated folder in the root directory

Alfred

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Thank you gentlemen. That is one of the most emphatic endorsements of software I have ever seen.

A couple of follow up questions.

(a) which 7-Zip version is recommended: 4.65 or the 9.15 beta

(b) just download the .msi version for my Win7

(c) I presume it is safe to place 7-Zip in my Program Folder rather than creating a dedicated folder in the root directory

Alfred

(a) 4.65
(b) yes
(c) yes

Thank you, VSWG and the others who replied.

Alfred