WinZip, WinRAR or 7-zip?

I bet every computer should have at least had 1 file compression software installed. Someone might ask what this thing is, well usually non-technical people will call it program to zip/compress and unzip/extract file.

Most of the people are familiar with WinZip and WinRAR, as most people currently using this 2 software. I'm not sure about what so famous about WinZip, perhaps the name is related with zip? Or most computers pre-installed this software.

Next, WinRAR also one of the popular software that high optimize multi-core technology (those Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD X2) and software that enable user to compress into RAR format.

This 2 software is license and need to pay, although it has a Trier version, but most of the people don't bother about it even after the Trier expiry, as long as it works.

What is 7-zip? 7-zip actual is a compression format that have average higher compression rate compare with zip and rar (in short, the file after compress is smaller). Besides that, 7-zip also is a name of a software that allow user to extract many compression file format such as zip, rar, gzip and etc, and it allow user to compress file into zip and 7-zip. Most important is, this software is FREE, and it is an open source project. Well, the user interface might not look as interesting as other, but it work out nicely and fast (Jzip is another software base on 7-zip and have a nicer user interface, but lack of some most latest feature. FREE too).

For technical person, 7-zip has other feature like compress/extract at background, compress/extract file using command line (this one is useful for software developer), able to extract compression format usually use in linux and etc. Another version of 7-zip which can let you bring around inside pendrive called 7-zip portable.

If you have recently reformatted your PC/laptop and want to download file compression software, try 7zip. 7zip always in the list of tools that I will install on a new reformat PC. You can get it from here 7zip website. Well, just give it a try if you tired to click on the prompt about license expiry.