WinZip 11.0 Pro

WinZip stuck 11.0’s best new features in the Pro version, a leap from the Standard flavor. Both include new thumbnail viewers (no need to extract images), a new algorithm for shrinking lossless WAV files, and new support for extracting BZR and RAR files. Pro gives you a full-image viewer, FTP uploading, CD/DVD burning abilities, command line support (albeit via an addon), and improved backup and automated tools (email notifications, automatic sending of ZIP files, FTP folder searches, etc.) via the Job Wizard.

Best Compression essentially extends WinZip’s inclusion of PPMd and bzip2 compression options in recent versions to let 11.0 auto-select the best option based on the files you provide. (A caveat of using Best Compression is that extracting its resulting ZIP files requires a compatible archiver, such as WinZip 10.0 or newer.) Among my various tests, Win-Zip compressed a 301MB test folder of mixed files to 110MB at its Legacy (Zip 2.0) setting. With Best Compression on, the same folder archived to 83.6MB. WinRAR archived the folder to 94.9MB (RAR) at normal and 94.3MB (RAR) at best. 7-Zip (free) shrank the folder to 84.5MB (PPMd) at normal and 84MB (PPMd) at its maximum setting.

Elsewhere, WinZip’s Windows Explorer-like navigation is wonderful, and being able to associate alternative extensions to WinZip to work around email filters is a nice touch. Still, power users who argue their archivers equal or better WinZip’s tools and security (11.0 includes up to 256-bit AES encryption) for fewer bones than 11.0 Pro have a strong case, even if registered users get a 50% price break upgrading to 11.0