Overview

Versatility and features are the main merits of WinZip. The most popular file compressing brand in the world, Winzip is known for a comprehensive feature set, intuitive interface and support for the most popular compressed file types. If you are looking for the on the market, look no further as WinZip is an excellent tool that will please even the most demanding users. Let’s analyze WinZip and its features in this review.

Installation

WinZip boast a straightforward installation that will not pose you any kind of problems. Just downlaod the small setup kit and choose the install location on your system’s drive. At the end of a fast and smooth installation, you can opt for WinZip to recognize the compression file types such as RAR or ZIP and be your default compression tool. It doesn’t come bundled with adware/spyware or other programs and you should be happy to know that WinZip supports all of the available versions of Windows from Win XP onwards.

Interface

The interface of WinZip is easy to use and very intuitive due to its emulation of Windows Vista and 7. Users who are familiar with these operating systems will simply adore WinZip. The navigation is great, thanks to the well placed buttons and controls and everything feels smooth. Creating new archives or extracting them is easy and requires only a few clicks. A powerful yet easy to use tool, WinZip is perfect for novice users too.

Pros

All the features you’d expect to see in a typical file compression software are included in WinZip. Self-extracting archives, split archives into multiple volumes and repair damaged archives are the main functions of WinZip. Repairs damaged files in addition to scheduled backups of ZIP files are also provided by WinZip. Moreover, the ZIP Wizard is one of the best features found in WinZip. A series of simple steps and questions designed to help inexperienced users achieve their goal of zipping or unzipping a file or series of files form the backbone of this feature. Thus, using this tool is an easy task as you don’t have to possess any previous compression file knowledge. Power users are not forgotten though. A comprehensive feature set available in the “Classic View” interface that includes 128-AES and 256-AES password protection is provided for advanced users. Another useful feature of WinZip is the fact that you can email your files using Outlook. Keep in mind that only ZIP files are compressed by WinZip while a number of popular formats, including RAR, 7Zip, TAR and seven other file formats can be extracted using it.

Cons

More formats that you can compress outside of ZIP and ZIPX would be great. And a quick glance at online user feedback reviews show that many users are not too happy that this tool comes at a $29.95 price tag. There is a limited usage evaluation period with the trial version so you can try out WinZip risk free before deciding to purchase the full version.

Alternatives

Let’s have a look at some of the alternatives to WinZip. These include the following tools: , , , , and .

Conclusion

All in all, it can be said that the best file compression software in the industry is WinZip; however with so many emerging free zipping and unzipping tools on the market, the only step to make WinZip the undeniably top notch tool is to lower the purchasing cost to attract or retain more users.