Almost all businesses have a need to send and receive compressed files for one reason or another. Most businesses pay a site license for PKZip or WinZip. Now there are Open Source alternatives to buying these commercial products, both for business and personal use. You might be able to save some money and not lose and functionality with these products.
One such alternative is 7-Zip, a free Open Source file compression / decompression utility for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. It is able to both pack and unpack 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, and TAR format files. In addition, it cam unpack the following file types: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS. It also handles file encryption / decryption.
Some of the other features of 7-Zip include:
- High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
- For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
- Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
- Self-extracting capability for 7z format
- Integration with Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Powerful command line version
- Plugin for FAR Manager
- Localizations for 69 languages
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