The following results are the average time and file size produced. The tests were performed three times with restart between each round. The compression file format tested were zip (readable by any compression tools) and proprietary format (vendor’s specific). The compression method ranges from Store to Best (for the most compressed).

There are two archive formats available: RAR and ZIP. In a similar fashion to WinZip, WinRAR has also retained the familiar interface. This feature is not available in both 7-Zip and WinRAR. At the end of the compression process, a summary with graph is displayed. The compression types are Optimize for best compression (only for newer version of WinZip) and Legacy Compression. The only thing to be aware of is the optional Google Toolbar during the setup. It still offers Classic and Wizard style for managing compressed files. The WinZip interface has not changed much since the initial release. There are settings like Word size, dictionary size, etc for advanced compression. The supported archive formats are zip, 7-zip and Tar. It offers three type of compression: Store, Fastest, Fast, Normal, Maximum, and Ultra being the highest. The 108 MB sample test files comprised of Adobe Acrobat, JPG, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, MP3, Text, MOV and Word 2007. The tests were performed on an Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2 GHz laptop with 1 GB of RAM running Windows XP Service Pack 3 with latest security updates and patches applied. In this test, we benchmarked 7-zip, WinZip, and WinRAR. Please note, for mp3 and AVI or QuickTime files, there might not be a reduction of file size as they are already in compressed state.

It is still interesting to see how well this file compression tools performed with large movies, music and document files. However, they are still great for software distribution – especially when exe download is not available. Nowadays, with large size of hard drive and fast Internet connection, the file compression tools might not be relevant.

In 2000, 7-Zip was released as an open source product. Both of them are commercial shareware products. Back in the 1990s, WinZip and WinRAR are two of the most popular file compression tools.

Winzip7