July 19th, 2005

Vector Capital Buys WinZip : Will Features Stay Free?

Winzip has been around for years as a the most popular compression utility for Windows, with more than 140 million downloads. Now Vector Capital Buys WinZip.

Snippets from a CNET report

“The company also has never charged for upgrades or new versions, a common practice in the software world. And it has not added extra features for customers that paid the $29 licensing fee.”

“Vector will try to change that by reminding users a little more firmly that the software costs money, as well as likely coming out with features that only paying customers can download. Vector also signed a marketing and distribution agreement with Google.”

I have tried several zipping utilities and software, but have always come back to Winzip because of its wide user base, excellent features and compatibility which has never failed. Although it is a shareware and they charge $29 for full features and no prompting. But I dont mind the prompt asking to pay to switch to a registered version, as it was very useful to zip documents and files. It helps to save storage space, dramatically reduce e-mail transmission time, and efficiently archive documents.

And now it seems it might become a pay to use software to keep full features running. Maybe I should start looking for other compression utilities! Which zip software do you like?

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Comments

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1. Anonymous | 20/07/05 #

I use 7-zip.
2. Anonymous | 10/09/05 #

Anomalous sez:

I like WinRAR. Seems to me WinZIP 10 largely catch up to WinRAR, except the folders view [which you could just as well open Windows Exporer or whatever].

One reason I prefer WinRAR is the more effective sytem to recover from a corrupted archive file. Stuffit, which is available for Win and Mac, also has effective recovery system built in.

Some still seek the “smallest” or the “fastest” archive or archiver–in this day of XP, 1 GB RAM, and broadband, perhaps this is not so important. If you have older systems, then this is more important.

Ease of use might be important. This is in the eye of the beholder. Stuffit is very easy because it works like a MAC. WinRAR is very easy once you figure out how to use it ;-). Any archiver can be mastered and put to use.

One advantage of the [old fashioned]zip format is it is natively supported in XP and most have an extractor.

I like to archive files so they are in one place, and even the long [>64 character] filenames fit on a standard format CD-R.

If you need encryption, it is available. either in most of the pay archivers, or separately in open source freeware applications. Use AES or Blowfish, and nobody will recover your stuff for 100+ years–& if you forget the password neither will you ;-).

In conclusion, it seems to me you can have whatever you want in the archive situation.

For legal and free, go to pricelessware and see what free archivers and encrypters they recommend. All are great.

For good and pay, buy WinRAR, Stuffit Deluxe, or WinZIP.

For illegal, great, and free, you can get most of the pay archivers–if you are awarez of how…