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New Winzip in the Works 530

Posted by samzenpus from the unzip-it dept.
flufster writes "Today WinZip released a public beta version of WinZip 10.0, the latest version of the popular archiving software. The biggest change in this version is that the software has finally been broken into two versions - Standard and Professional, offering paying users additional functionality in the Professional version, while allowing others to use the Standard edition without an annoying nag screen. Version 10.0 has a revamped interface designed to mimic XP's Windows Explorer, and claims to zip archives faster. The software now supports the PPMd and bzip2 compression formats, and can burn from zip archives directly to writable optical media such as CDs and DVDs. The main addition to the Pro edition is an automation feature called 'WinZip Job Wizard' which allows scheduled archiving instructions to be set. Almost all the other features we're used to now come completely free in the Standard edition."
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New Winzip in the Works More

New Winzip in the Works

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  • -1, buy an ad. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:07AM (#13452961) Homepage Journal
    Oh wait, you did.

    • Re:-1, buy an ad. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by interiot ( 50685 )
      One of the reasons people switched away from Altavista/Lycos/etc to Google was that the previous search engines presented advertisements in the same exact format as actual content. Reputable newspapers don't do this either.

      Fortunately, back then, Google was a great alternative. And fortunately today, we have another alternative [digg.com] that hasn't taken this practice up (yet).

      • Re:-1, buy an ad. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rayde ( 738949 )
        thank you for your advertisement of digg. please go away now.

        this isn't an ad for winzip... it is news that this fairly ubiquitous program that we've all used at some point will now be available in a free version without nags. it's not like this article was completely without any merit.

        • Re: Free? Says who? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Ahnteis ( 746045 )
          I can't see anywhere that it says this will be free?

          In fact, the only "free" on the page is in this sentence:
          "Caution, WinZip 10.0 is not a free upgrade."

          Have I missed something burried in one of the links? I looked and I see nothing that says it'll be free.

    • This is new? I've had it since 1997 (Score:4, Informative)

      by mimarsinan ( 911816 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @08:13AM (#13453381)
      I wrote my first archiver, called CompreXX, back in 1997. It had the exact "new" Explorer interface that's the big deal in WinZip 10 now, 8 years later.

      In 1999 I added plug-in extensibility to the product, so it could be extended to support more archives while keeping the same UI.

      In 2002, I made the product manage archives natively in Windows Explorer itself - just like what Windows XP does for ZIP files, except for all archive types (that plug-ins support) and all Windows platforms. Give WinZip another 8 years and they'll figure that one out.

      CompreXX right now natively compresses ZIP, RAR, ACE, SIT, 7ZIP (7ZIP has the best compression), and 28 total archive formats. It extracts 48. Of course, because I do not have a multimillion dollar marketing budget, there is nothing I can do to get the word out about it.

      And reading about WinZip's revolutionary "new" features, especially on Slashdot, is really depressing.

      • Re:This is new? I've had it since 1997 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @09:29AM (#13454082)
        Here's why WinZip is more popular:
        1. It's been around a lot longer than your software. The earliest reference I found in Google groups was 1991.
        2. Winzip is free. What's that you say? It's not? I think I've seen a registered copy once or twice at work in the last 15 years. Winzip allows you to use the trial version forever. Does your software allow that?

        From what I've read, though, you may be in luck. To increase revenue the new owners of the WinZip product will be stricter [arstechnica.com] about trial periods. I'm quite sure they don't have a multimillion dollar budget either. They have momentum; they have users. Search google for "use winzip" and see how many pages read, "to open the file, use winzip or other program..."

        To start, why not put your URL with your name or in a sig? If you overlook such simple things how good can your software be?

      • Of course, because I do not have a multimillion dollar marketing budget, there is nothing I can do to get the word out about it.

        I often find that just a simple link to the product's web site helps.

  • Obligatory bash.org quote Obligato Obligatory bas (Score:5, Funny)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) * on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:08AM (#13452967)
    what should I give sister for unzipping? Um. Ten bucks? no I mean like, WinZip?

  • Superior, free alternative (Score:5, Informative)

    by Solder Fumes ( 797270 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:08AM (#13452968)
    My favorite window archiving tool: http://www.izarc.org/ [izarc.org]

    I guess 7-zip is popular too. Regardless, Winzip is yesterday's news.
    • I have tested almost every other app people have suggested to me and WinRAR [rarlabs.com] still leads the way.
      • Agreed. The explorer integration is just great. Typically I don't even have to see the program, I just right-click drag, extract here. Options like extract in subfolder and, when dragging more than one archive, extract each into its own subdirectory are cool too, invaluable if you need them.

        Actually, that's all I need of a compression software. 7zip is not terrible, either, but with the most recent version I tried - a month or so ago - the explorer integration wasn't there yet. It had an "Extract..." entry

    • Re:Superior, free alternative (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:23AM (#13453071)
      wait, winzip isnt free?
    • Ok, which one of you jackasses /.ed IZArc?!

      • Re:Damn you! (Score:3, Funny)

        by trezor ( 555230 )

        It's not slashdotted per se, it's just compressed with technology you haven't heard about before, so you don't get access to the information.

        Either that, or if no-one pleads guilty I guess we can infer that the perpetrator is that anonymous coward guy.

        Double the pun in one post! This calls for a -ZipIt!, Lousy compression-based humour mod :)

    • Re:Superior, free alternative (Score:5, Informative)

      by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:35AM (#13453135)
      IZarc is free and supports pretty much every compression format. But, for me at least, it constantly barfs a hairball when I try to drag-n-drop a file out of an archive that is in a nested folder. The only way to get at the file in that instance is to unpack the entire archive and then navigate to the file in Explorer. Neither WinZip, WinRar, nor 7-Zip have this problem.
    • I use Powerarchiver and have used it for a long time now.

      It's not free but it does just about everything that this new version does, as well as open just about every compression format out there as well as create files with most of the compression formats as well.

      For free, I'll second 7-zip.

  • writing to opical media... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... is this really necessary for an archiver?

  • What about rar? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bach37 ( 602070 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:09AM (#13452970)
    What about the annoying rar format? Hope it can de/compress that.

    • Re:What about rar? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:12AM (#13452993) Homepage Journal
      Or you could just get WinRar [rarlabs.com]. Free upgrades and a better format to boot.
      • On that note, I think it's about time that I update to my WinRAR to 3.50.
        And, oh, why hasnt slashdot posted news about WinRAR 3.50? They didnt pay enough?
      • Or you could just get WinRar. Free upgrades and a better format to boot.

        And if all you need is to be able to read RAR archives, then you can download free-as-in-beer extraction programs for most major platforms here [rarlabs.com]. There's even source code [rarlab.com] available.*

        People are welcome not to like WinRAR for being a proprietary product using proprietary algorithms, but nobody can complain that RAR archives are inaccessible to them.

        * Under a slightly restrictive license, but it's still source code.
    • I agree. I always liked Winzip, but now Winzip+Winrar+native windows compression makes 2 more than I need.

      Windows needs to support gzip (those darn pesky .tar.gz files) as well.

      Now, I use 7zip, which does just about everything including .arj (sorry, no .arc support for you people who fell asleep in 1987 and just woke up)

  • Multiple Zip Files (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jdvuyk ( 651327 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:10AM (#13452976)
    The ability to unzip large groups of ZIP files in one action would be a lovely addition!!! I just use winrar anyway as, although it can be alot more ugly, the methods it uses are much more elegant. My 2c...
    • > The ability to unzip large groups of ZIP files in one action would be a lovely addition!!!

      You mean like multiply selecting zip files in explorer, right clicking and selecting the Winzip options of either 'Extract to here' or 'Extract to here using file names for folders' ?

      Winzip has had this option for ages....

    • Use Winzip - it's had this feature for as long as I can remember...

      Not sure how that post got modded insightful. You'd think he would have tried it before posting.

  • What a ridiculous advertisement! (Score:4, Funny)

    by kmmatthews ( 779425 ) <krism@mailsnare.net> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:11AM (#13452984) Homepage Journal
    Great, an AD pretending to be an article. Not only that, it's for a Windows product on a Linux-based website!

  • Last chance saloon (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oberondarksoul ( 723118 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:11AM (#13452985) Homepage
    I've personally always quite liked using WinZip on the PC; yes, Windows has had zip capabilities built-in for a while now (I believe they debuted in Windows ME), but I've still always preferred keeping WinZip around, especially for its disk-spanning capabilities.

    However, with broadband increasing in prevelance, and pendrives and CD writers becoming pretty much the norm now for home users (my parents, never the most technologically literate of users, have their own USB pendrives which they love), not to mention zip integration into just about every common OS now, is there still a place for WinZip? Even if people continue to download it, most people I know who've used it just bypass the nag screens without a second thought - how long can they survive?

    • Re:Last chance saloon (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Evro ( 18923 )
      There will always be a place for a format like "ZIP" even if only for its concatenation ability. Downloading 1000 1k files ends up being more time consuming than downloading a single 1 MB file. As for WinZip itself, I don't think most businesses have migrated from Win 2000 yet, and many don't plan to, so there's probably some life left in it.
    • Ah, I remember the days when I was the first to get a CD-ROM drive - the hours spent when friends would bring round a stack of floppies, and we'd experiment with the PKZip options so we could copy files from a CD to floppies.

      Not relevant, just brought back a rush of nostalgia...
    • The company I worked for removed WinZip from its standard build when it moved to XP. It is now back in the standard build, because Windows' ZIP support is minimal at best. It also can't handle any other archive format, such as .tar.gz.

    • Re:Last chance saloon (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shancock ( 89482 ) * on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:26AM (#13453087)
      I agree completely. I also have used winzip from day one and this is the first upgrade that my registration number did not work on. Until this point all my upgrades have been free.

      I guess this emphasises the fact that they are going to have to find a new way to generate $.

      I think it may be time for me to switch. I don't feel that I should be paying for a basic utility that comes free with most apps anyway.

  • So what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Evro ( 18923 ) <evandhoffman@@@gmail...com> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:12AM (#13452992) Homepage Journal
    What is this now, Pressreleasedot? I'm running WinZip 8.0 and will never upgrade it for the same reason I'll never upgrade from AIM 4.3, Acrobat 5, and Office 2000: the problem is solved and the old version does everything it should without any new useless cruft (why is Acrobat 7 ~25 megs to read PDF files? And why does it access the Internet at all?).

    Did all the "old school" Slashdot editors leave or something? These new guys they have are pretty lame.

  • what? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis&gmail,com> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:12AM (#13452996) Homepage
    tar + bzip2 + mkisofs + cdrecord.

    Wow... now I don't need "professional" tools.

    Seriously, windows users come to expect nothing any more I guess. There are alternatives to "the 10th edition of twenty year old compression algorithms".

    I'm sorry but honestly what the fuck is the real market for Winzip?

    Even when I was a windows user I used Winimp as it is free, compresses better [when making .imp, it also handles zips fine] and doesn't require me to shell out money.

    Tom
    • How the hell is what I wrote a troll? it's the truth. Free alternatives that often work better are available.

      I guess if you mean "we must buy all software even if it's WORTHLESS and anything contrary to this is trolling" then you're right...

      But seriously, I do backups to CDR weekly and I haven't paid a dime for the software to do it.

      Tom
    • tar + bzip2 + mkisofs + cdrecord.

      Wow... now I don't need "professional" tools.

      Wrong. You already do use them, except they are professional instead of "professional". You can use tools that are fast, efficient and can be easily scripted; the point&grunt interface is for the naives who will shell out money just to get an advertised tool.

      I'm sorry but honestly what the fuck is the real market for Winzip?

      You'll be surprised, but try to download a SDK from Microsoft. It won't come in a Microsoft native fo

      • Re:what? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
        And people flame me when I say people should learn how to use computers... :-/

        Maybe if people realized how to put a shell script together [like back in the day BYTE used to put batch scripts on how to automate this or that] they wouldn't shell out money.

        But you say "that's anti-american". I say no.

        I say, if the people at winzip didn't have a market they'd put their talents to something that actually is needed, furthering technology and bringing humanity further along.

        These companies that write dime-a-dozen
      • Wrong. You already do use them, except they are professional instead of "professional". You can use tools that are fast, efficient and can be easily scripted; the point&grunt interface is for the naives who will shell out money just to get an advertised tool.

        I am entirely capable of writing a script, but I prefer to point and grunt. I guess that makes me naive for using tools to make my life easier. Silly me :(

    • Re:what? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      tar and bzip2 are great if all you do is stuff and unstuff everything in one go and don't intend to do it often. It is fucking abysmal if you intend to use the archive a lot, such as to pull out a single file, or freshen some files but not others. The same goes for CAB files on Win32.

      I use zip on Linux as much as I do on Win32. It's not as efficient as bzip2 but it's much more practical for everyday use. WinZip has a better compression algorithm in the latest copy but I'm holding off using it until it gets

    • Re:what? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )
      Here's what makes a .zip fine superior:

      EVERY COMPUTER on the market right now can open a .zip file out-of-the-box without downloading any software.

      That's a HUGE value-add that you're completely ignoring. It's like Fat32... sure Fat32 sucks ass as a disk format, but everything can use it without me having to install anything.

  • Must compete with Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:12AM (#13452997)

    Now that Microsoft has incorporated an unzip utilitiy in the OS, WinZip can't profit from people who just want to unzip files.

  • Who needs it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <joe@joe-ba l d win.net> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:13AM (#13453004) Homepage Journal
    I have 7-zip...it handles almost all archives I come across quickly and well, and to boot it just works. Why the hell would I want to go back to WinZip, which from the sounds of it is even more bloated than it was before?

  • Windows Zip utilities, huh? (Score:5, Informative)

    by gusnz ( 455113 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:14AM (#13453009) Homepage

    Here's some good freeware ones:

    7-Zip [7-zip.org]
    A free, open source Windows zip utility with support for several archive formats, and comparatively great compression. Small and fast too; it's my personal choice at the moment.
    IZArc [izarc.org]
    Not open source, but supports a few more formats
    ICEOWS [iceows.com]
    Formerly ARJFolder, integrates very cleanly into Windows Explorer.

    There's more out there, but really, I can't see how Winzip is as relevant today as it was during the Win3.x days when it was the only good zip GUI out there. I guess scheduling is nice, but then again, all operating systems come with a schedular these days anyway.

    • Also there is:
      "Stuffit Expander" [stuffit.com]
      Yes it is far from perfect. Yes, it does only decompress and Stuffit Standard, which will compress. Stuffit Expander will decompress many types of files. However, to get Stuffit Expander you have to give up your e-mail address and they will send you at least some spam, but Allume, the developer, from my previous experience is at least not totally scum.

  • Makes sense. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:15AM (#13453011) Homepage
    Since most people just click past the nag screen this is the sensible thing to do: Give people the basics for free, and charge for the advanced features that really are corporate time-savers and hence worth paying for.

    • Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)

      by keraneuology ( 760918 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:30AM (#13453105) Journal
      From TFA:
      Caution, WinZip 10.0, when it is released, will not be a free upgrade. If you are a registered user of a previous version of WinZip and install WinZip 10.0, you will no longer be registered.

      In other words, all of those people who were promised free upgrades way back when are now SOL. Yes, WinZip has the right to change their terms any time they want and have no obligation to continue to provide free upgrades, power to them.

      But I don't have to continue to support their company. Their "upgrade assurance" program is cute, though... for an extra 20% you can receive assurances that if a new version of WinZip comes out within the next year you'll get a copy. They've been averaging a new version what, every two? three? years? How many people are going to fall for that one?

  • And we care because... ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SirGarlon ( 845873 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:15AM (#13453012)
    Why does the Slashdot community, one of the largest Free / Open Source communities on the Net, care when a new proprietary version of some Windows-only software comes out? Find another place to post this nonsense.
    • I'm with you on this one. I can tolerate some amount of Windows-related news, if only for the "know thy enemy" factor, but this article is not one of them. Sadly, judging from the comments it seems that many Slashdotters are actually using Windows to a great extent.
    • there's nothing sad about using windows, slashdot is not a linux advocacy site, though many of it's users seems to think so. Slashdot is a news site for technology orientated geeks, windows is a piece of technology and so very much worthy of coverage on slashdot. The parent article though is not news, it's a piece of press pr for a product, dressed up as information on a yesterday piece of tech that no-one really cares about anymore.
    • If you a sysadmin, you need to know this kind of stuff. Even a Linux System admin will have windows on their network.

  • Others (Score:2, Informative)

    by Saiyine ( 689367 )

    Althought really obsolete, WinZip is extremely popular with uneducated computers users.

    I, for one... recommend these alternatives: winrar [rarlab.com] and winace [winace.com], wich are vastly superiors in performance, but shareware, and 7-Zip [7-zip.org] wich has good perfomance with a poor interface, but it's free.


    --
    Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] superb hosting.
    Kunowalls!!! [kunowalls.host.sk] Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).

  • /. readers should care about WinZip because... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:17AM (#13453027) Homepage
    ... it supports a new "deflate64" compression that is NOT supported by zlib. As a result, clamd chokes on some ZIP files and can't scan them.

    This pain-in-the-@ss aspect of the new Winzip is the most likely thing to affect /. readers.
    • So once a piece of software becomes popular, it should be frozen for all time and no new features added? The compression seting has never defaulted to maximum, you have to select it and it warns you about compatability. What more do you want?
      • I have no problem with software evolving. The problem is that deflate64 is a proprietary, undocumented compression algorithm (unlike the previous ZIP algorithms.) The only way to make an interoperable implementation is through reverse-engineering, and given the state of copyright law in the USA today, that's a dangerous prospect for Free Software.

  • This has always been the case. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Crixus ( 97721 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:18AM (#13453031)
    This has always been the case with software. Once a fairly mature release is in the market, with lots of useful features, they then need to make you think you need the latest features. Of course some marketing wonk writes lots of stuff that people ultimately read, and then they're convinced.

    I mean seriously, whenever I boot into Windows, Office '97 provides me with EVERY POSSIBLE word-processing feature I need.

    MS has the advantage of making the OS too, so they can force you to upgrade either the OS or the application software at their whim.

    Why is there an ad on /. again?

  • I just downloaded the 10.0 beta version. To test it, I unpacked the winzip 10 beta installer itself (wz100beta.exe). Inside the resulting folder, I found several exe files. There is one 725K file called GDS.exe, which appears to be the installer (or part of it) for Google Desktop Search. Two others named GTB9x.EXE and GTBXP.EXE seem to be the installers for Google Toolbar. Why on earth is Winzip bundling the installers for Google Desktop Search and Google Toolbar with Winzip?!! The readme and license agreem
  • Zip makes such large archives compared to rar, ace, and several other formats I'm not sure if it's even worth it anymore.

    If they improved the algorithm in WinZip 10 maybe they can make it more competitive.

    LK

  • bzip2 (Score:2)

    by Erwos ( 553607 )
    Very nice that they support bzip2 - it seems to be gaining some traction in the community now, so it should be handy.

    -Erwos
  • Not open source but free as in beer with no nags or ads. Made in Italy and available in English and Italian and more. It handles more than 20 compression formats and offers four encryption algorithms.

    ZipGenius [zipgenius.it]

  • Come on, a new WinZIP release is newsworthy? This is just an ad for a silly product that adds a flood of bells and whistles to a set of processes that should be deadly simple.

  • Funny (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mokiejovis ( 540519 )
    I find it humorous that when Winzip hits 10.0 and starts offering free versions, /.ers start foaming at the mouth to say what a steaming heap of shit it is and OMG can you believe people BUY that when I love to use [other application] that has [other feature] and it's FREE? And then the obligatory, "slashdot sucks now, look at the ad they're running and calling it an article."

    And just last week it was all lollipops and blowjobs for Opera when they turned 10 and released a free version.
  • Ever since Win XP added native ZIP support I figured : oh there's Microsoft added a new feature to the OS that kills the flagship product of a little guy. Of course, Internet Explorer (killing Netscape) is another obvious example. Why isn't this banned?

  • WinRAR 3.50 recently released, fyi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by simetra ( 155655 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @07:55AM (#13453249) Homepage Journal
    This new release includes "themes", which greatly de-uglifies it. Also, it reads/writes iso's, which is cool. I don't know if winzip does that or not. Winrar has a pretty powerful CLI too, which I use to back up certain directories on my Windows machine through a scheduled task. Winzip I believe has command-line options too.

    Anyway, the new WinRAR is so nice I bought a copy.

    Yes, bought, as in spent money! You can do that, you know.

  • Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sonic McTails ( 700139 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @11:42AM (#13455473)
    While it's more common on Macintosh, I use Stuff Expander [stuffit.com] for Windows. It opens almost anything thrown at it, and it doesn't need the proper extension so it can open mystery files as well. It works in the background and the only time you see any windows from it when you explicately open it, or when it's decompressing.

    I used to use WinZip back in the day though, and it was realible, and quick, so maybe it's time to re-evaluate it.

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