poll: rar or zip?

[damiano]

Originally posted by: glugglug
rar has best combination of compression ratio/speed/convenience/features.

7z gets better compression ratios.

BTW, zip has NO ADVANTAGES WHATSOEVER. WinRAR actually works with .zip files faster than WinZIP does.

And if you are going to create crappy .zip files, at least use 7-zip to do so..... Even with zip archives 7zip has about 10% better compression ratio than zip. If you use its own format it is more like half the size of a .zip, but much slower.

winrar takes longer to compress and decompress
but the compression is indeed better with winrar

 

[beer]

Alziip is, I think, the best free Win32 compression program. It does virtually every compression scheme available.

But Bzip2 is the best algorithm.

 

[n0cmonkey]

.zip (thanks to pkzip), .Z (compress), and .gz (gzip) are the standards.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: glugglug

BTW WinZIP is shareware, just like WinRAR.

It's only sharware until you buy a license. I use Winzip, I have used it for at least 6 years. Every place I've worked has used Winzip as the default zip-type program. I see no reason to use anything else at this point. Especially with hard drives being as cheap as they are now. Why worry about 1MB when you have 100GB available?

 

[BFG10K]

I use ZIP because it's natively supported by Windows XP.

 

[holycow]

rar.

 

[NapalmKing]

Back in the DOS days, I used RAR. Nowadays, I use ZIP.

 

[elzmaddy]

When I compress files for my own use, I use RAR. When I want to send files to someone else I use ZIP since ZIP is the most popular format.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: elzmaddy
When I compress files for my own use, I use RAR. When I want to send files to someone else I use ZIP since ZIP is the most popular format.

I always use Rar. If I send a compressed file, I make it self-extracting.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

For my own uses, tar+gzip (or just gzip if it's a single file). If I was dealing with something involving windows, I would use zip as that is what I'm familiar with.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: elzmaddy
When I compress files for my own use, I use RAR. When I want to send files to someone else I use ZIP since ZIP is the most popular format.

i use rar and make people dl winrar.

 

[glugglug]

Unless what you are sending is less than 40K, a self-extracting 7z file is almost always smaller than a non-self-extracting zip of the same data. Often even smaller than a non-self-extracting best compressed solid archived RAR!

RAR is nicer than 7z overall though because:

a) it's several times faster and has a cleaner interface
b) nice features like recovery blocks in case part of the disk goes bad, and auto-detection of text, uncompressed audio and 24-bit bitmap files to do special non-lossy multimedia compression on them.

Both rar and 7z get a better ratio than WinZip, even when creating .zip files and can do solid archives to further increase that gap. With 7z it's substantially better ratios even on .zip files. WinRAR creates .zip files faster than WinZIP does, and with a slightly better ratio.

 

[lucky9]

I've used PowerDesk for years and whatever the default self-extracting system is is what I use...I think. Anyway, I've never had to worry about it.

 

[htmlmasterdave]

winace is best imho

 

[propaganda]

definitely rar

 

[Wigwam]

i asked this question a few months ago and was prompted to compare for myself and report back the results:
rar was faster but there wasnt much in them compression-wise [but i was doing this with movies and only later it was pointed out to me they are compressed anyway]; infact on some occasions winzip beat winrar but it was by non-significant amounts.

that said - both are good but as n00bs [and mostly-n00bs like me] are more familiar with winzip, it is incorporated into xp etc etc i like that.
i do have winrar too though...