WinZip Replacement

[(Shovel)]

Well, my safely zipped up "registered" (albeit by my old sixth form.. ahem) copy of WinZip has been lost. Bugger. The self extracting zip that I thought I had it safe in actually contained WinAMP.. bugger.

Soo, there's aparently hundreds of free Zip replacements, but which is best?

Critically, I'd like it to reproduce the WinZip shell context menus in Windows, and, ideally, allow me to decompress RAR files as well,

Thanks for any tips,

Ben.

 

[Jonty]

Hi Ben

I have to confess that I just use Windows' own ZIP utility, as they don't come much simpler or more integrated. However, if you're regularly using .rar files and the likes, then I can appreciate that the Windows system will not be all that suitable. In the past I've heard Power Archiver is a good utlity, and only costs $19 to register, so it's not going to break the bank WinRAR is similar again.

As for completely freeware utilities, I'm not so sure what's hot and what's not If people here don't offer any advice (but I'm sure they will ) then just head on over to Download.com or Tucows and use the user ratings as a guide to what is the best.

Kind Regards

 

[(Shovel)]

Fab. Cheers Jonty

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

7-zip , it's free (GPL'd) and if you use the 7-zip format you'll get about 7 time the compression on the old zip format, it also supports zip, rar, lhj, tar and a multitude of other formats. It's also extremly quick.

So like, use it!

Edit; it includes shell integration as well.

 

[xane]

EnZIP is quite good, but not sure if it handles RAR.