An auto-wipe feature makes sure that temporarily extracted data from encrypted archives gets shredded right away.

The program also allows users to add 128- or 256-bit AES encryption to archives for security. If you work with large ZIP files a lot, you’ll be happy to hear that WinZip 14 can handle ZIPs above 4GB. But the software can read many more types, such as RAR, 7z, BZ2, JAR, image (IMG, ISO), and cabinet files (CAB). WinZip can create three different types of archives: ZIP, ZIPX, and LHA. The Best Method setting selects the best compression algorithm for the file types you throw at the application. Even on regular ZIP files, performance is only average. On the other hand, WinZip still has yet to distribute workloads across multiple processing cores, so it’s awfully slow when you use LZMA or the Best Method setting. Version 14 is what you want if you’re using Windows Vista or 7.

On one hand, it integrates well with the operating system and has excellent usability. This is the most popular archiving tool, but it shows two very different faces in our testing. Last, but not least, is WinZip, available through (opens in new tab).

Winzip pro 14.0