Hmmm this seems like mis-information. Yes 7zip will work with Rar files, but only with decoding, not making/manipulating them... There's actually a large variety of formats 7zip supports for reading, but writing is more limited, mostly to zip, xz and 7z (i believe).

Don't forget some achievements (like unpack 10 files and so on). :)

Hmm... I can't remember the last time I had to open a rar-file. The rare cases I need to open a zip-file I didn't need a extra software for it because you can open it with Windows (since at least Windows 7; I don't know if Vista offered it too because I never used it).

Pretty sure it was supported in XP as well, not sure if it was earlier... However just because you can extract or access files, doesn't mean it acted entirely like a folder like it was meant to.

7zip can't make RAR files, but it can write .7z, .xz, .zip, .tar, .bzip2, .gzip, and .wim files.

You're right. 7zip can not create rar-Archives. My bad. I almpst always use zip if I have to pass on files, since current Windows versions support it out-of-the-box and I don't want the recipients to have to have install another software. And I don't like to use self-extracting stuff, because malware can easily attach to executables.

Sorry my bad, then probably the file was zip or 7z, anyway 7z may be with a Spartan interface (which in my case is totally awesome because I prefer fast functionality than candy in this domain) and may be a little slower when compressing, but 7z give a little more compression ration than .rar.

Yet so few people actually know how to right click and click the 'extract all' that would open a zip file's contents, so like my sister, more than willing to send a 30Mb bmp file for a baby photo rather than drop it in a zip at least... (After recompressing it and lowering the bpp, it came out like 300k)

Zip files honestly although are universally used, the 7zip is much better for compression, and file splitting. Technical documents based on how Zip files work specify the very end of the file contains the TOC (Table of Contents), and since zip was used for backups back in the day, you'd put in disk after disk, and the final disk would hold all the essential information... It actually was quite fascinating to read the design decisions.
Depends on what you're compressing...

[s]I'm not sure if[/s] Rar is a solid archive compression like 7zip; i know i saw huge increases in compression when i used 7zip. A 8Mb of pages from websites went from 2Mb compressed, to like 200k compressed. The reason was i know zip did a per-file compression (better for random access, low memory and backups)[s], and i think Rar followed suit, but i can't quite be sure...[/s]

edit: A little Wiki searching and yes it does seem to...

Expensive??????

WinRAR? Is it 1998 again?

Yeah well. And then how to explain to people that it's a bad idea to send ten 25-megapixel-photos they just got from their camera via email... or twenty...

I remember seeing licenses for zip back in 1992, and it was something akin to $40 per person. Naturally everyone used the shareware, while the full version let you do a few extra things that no one really seems to care about today (Like leaving comments that tell you things while it's extracting).
Don't think you can... Either they understand it, or they don't... My girlfriend keeps asking me which type is larger/smaller, the k, meg or gig....

Oh, and another wonderful thing about WinRAR. If you use it to deploy files to a file structure with important security settings, WinRAR will quite happily demolish your carefully crafted security configuration, leaving your website (for example) completely non-functional. Ah, good times.

Never paid,never will.Freeware does the job I want and that is simple extraction of files.

Use 7-zip

Easy 7-zip

http://www.e7z.org/

<span class="bold">Win</span>Zip is still almost $40. WinZip Standard, that is, WinZip Pro is $50 and there's a WinZip Pro Combo for over $60. And I still can't see a reason to pay for a file compressor/archiver.