7-Zip File Archiver

There are some utility programs that are necessary to have on your computer. A file archiver is one of such programs. It is necessary to have around not so much for archiving/compressing your own files but more for unarchiving/decompressing files that other people may send to you. What is a file archiver anyway? It is a program that compresses/decompresses and stores (archives) one or more files into a single file, for one or both of the following reasons - to make it a smaller size file for faster transmission, eg over the Internet, and/or to 'archive' a number of files together in one file for better organization, especially useful for keeping a bunch of files together when transmitting a group of files to someone else.

There are two most common archiving formats on the Windows platform, namely the zip and the RAR formats. (Other OS like the Mac, Linux, Unix have their own format as well as their own archiving programs). These are only two of the many formats out there. There are two common commercial archiving programs for these two formats, the Winzip for the zip format, and the winrar for the RAR format. The good news is that there are alternatives to these two programs, even free ones. One of such alternatives is the 7-Zip program.

7-Zip is an open source file archiver software, that gives a high compression ratio. It is able to pack and/or unpack many different formats such as 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS. Judging from this list, one can say you are pretty well covered, if you use 7-zip.

For more details on 7-zip or to download the free software, you may visit the 7-zip site.