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WinRAR 4.10 Beta 4:
A very powerful archiver and archive manager for home or office use
WinRAR is definitely one of the most known Windows applications and many users have already interacted with it at least once in their virtual experience. And as far as the guys over at win.rar GmbH are concerned, that's pretty cool, especially if you agree to pay 29.95 Euros for the full version.
Basically, WinRAR is a must-have application that has the ability to replace all the other compression tools, providing support for most compression formats, including RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, TAR, GZip, UUE, ISO, BZIP2, Z and 7-Zip.
Theoretically, WinRAR has for Windows users the same role as gasoline plays for drivers, you can't live without it, although there are a bunch of developers who tried to steal the lion's share in this particular software segment with some free utilities.
WinRAR does not cook and doesn't wash your clothes, but instead it has the ability to scan the multimedia files you wish to compress and automatically recommend the best compression method for this task.
Of course, those who are a little embarrassed of the files they are about to compress, not that photos with you holding your lovely teddy bear in front of the mirror are something to be embarrassed about, could protect their data with a password, while husbands begging for mercy in front of their wives after they ruined the wedding pictures have a chance to survive thanks to the “Repair” function.
WinRAR leaves the compression tool area and moves towards the archive manager 3rd dimension with features that allow you to manipulate archives with a single click. You can backup the files you're about to compress, you can test the archived files and you can even scan the archives for viruses before decompressing, without putting the data stored on your computer at risk.
Sure, WinRAR has the same old and boring interface, but that's definitely enough for an application that's selling like hot cakes ever since it reached the Internet.
In our test, the compression and decompression process worked amazingly fast, and that should happened in your case too, at least if your computer is able to handle the task. The only problems you could experience is strictly related to hardware resources, as working with three or four archives at the same time could be a bit overwhelming for slower computers.
We tested the trial version of the compression tool, which is limited to 40 days and comes with some restrictions concerning the size of the archives but, if you're planning to buy yourself a nice gift, you should have a look at WinRAR.
Overall, WinRAR is extremely easy to use, not only for those who use Windows as a way of life, but also for those who don't know have a clue what “Recycle Bin” is.
What we liked the most was probably its functionality, as this application allows you to handle the most popular compression formats using a single interface, with very high speeds provided by the engine hidden under the hood. The only bad thing is probably its somewhat classic interface, although most people agree that this is basically the best way to allow users get in touch with WinRAR's tens of features.
Here are some key features of "WinRAR":
· WinRAR introduces an original compression algorithm. It provides high compression ratios on executable files, object libraries, large text files, etc.
· WinRAR offers an optional compression algorithm highly optimized for multimedia data.
· WinRAR supports files and archives up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 bytes in size, about 9000PB. The number of archived files is unlimited for all practical purposes.
· WinRAR provides complete support for RAR and ZIP 2.0 archives and is able to unpack CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, Z, 7Z archives.
· WinRAR supports NTFS file security and data streams.
· WinRAR offers both a classic interactive Windows interface and the command line interface.
· WinRAR provides functionality for creating a 'solid' archive, which can raise the compression ratio by 10% - 50% over more common methods, particularly when packing large numbers of small files.
· WinRAR offers the ability to create and change SFX archives using default and external SFX modules.
· WinRAR offers the ability to create a multi-volume archive as SFX.
· WinRAR offers a number of service functions, such as setting a password, adding archive and file comments. Even physically damaged archives may be repaired and an archive may be locked to prevent further changes.
Limitations:
· The number of files, which can be added to an archive, depends upon the amount of available memory and the length of file names. Roughly 128 bytes of memory are required per archived file for RAR archive. For example, it can take about 128 MB to compress one million of files. WinRAR has been tested to handle over one million of files.
· The size of a RAR archive, as well as the size of any single file within a RAR archive, is limited to 8,589,934,591 GB (9,223,372,036,854,775,807 bytes). Note that to create archives larger than 4 GB, you need to use NTFS, as older file systems do not support such large files.
· The size of a ZIP archive, as well as the size of any single file within a ZIP archive, is limited to 2 GB.
· In general RAR archive format is much better optimized for heavy tasks involving huge number of files and gigabytes of disk space.
What's New in This Release:
· Improved detection of UTF-8 encoding in file names in ZIP archives. WinRAR attempts to recognize Unicode names, even when UTF-8 flag is not present in ZIP archive headers.
Bugs fixed:
· If switch -t was set in RAR environment variable, WinRAR "View" command failed to open archived files;
· ""Autodetect" string" option in "Define volume sizes" dialog did not work;
· If "Split to volumes, size" in default compression profile was set to "Autodetect", "Delete" and "Add comment" commands refused to modify ZIP archives.
Installation:
1. Upack.
2. Install the software.
3. Copy the ".key" file to the installation directory.
4. Enjoy :)
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