A time for celebration

From Doghouse Diaries

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Funny

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Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

http://doran.pacifist.net/ Doran

Ha, I’d even forgotten about WinZip, I’ve been using 7-Zip for so long.
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  Nearly every time I have to help someone with their Windows PC, they still have it installed, even though Windows reads ZIPs natively.
  
  7zip is fantastic, though.
  - http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell
    
    FWIW, Windows reads zips natively, but I absolutely hate its handling of them. It treats them as folders and obscures the fact that you are in an archive. This might be a feature to some, but not to me. Also, access to advanced features are missing. Also: RAR.
    - http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
      
      I completely agree. I immediately change the file association on a new machine.
Donald Petersen

I’ve been using the sponsored (free) version of PDF995 every work day since the tail end of the Clinton Administration. I really will send them their $29.95, one of these days. God knows they’ve earned it.
- relawson
  
  Does it have a launch count like winzip does?
  
  I wonder who has the highest number? hah!
http://www.facebook.com/aaron.silva.3979 Aaron Silva

and the balloons and the little cone hats tags for celebration:$29.95
Richard

I actually bought the full version of WinZip 11 back in 2008, when the nag-screen made me feel guilty. Then they changed their payment pages so that they no longer accepted debit cards, and I had a handy excuse to never upgrade.
oasisob1

*Whooosh!*

(I don’t get it.)
- howaboutthisdangit
  
  When the time comes to install an archive utility on Windows, many people automatically think of WinZip (it has the perfect name going for it, if nothing else), even though it is nagware and better free alternatives exist.
http://www.facebook.com/obive Charlie Hayes

Corel bought WinZip ages ago.

Microsoft has a license for WinZip, as many of their downloads use WinZip self extractors.
- alienllama
  
  Wow Corel is still alive? That said, I’m working for Borland ;)
BBNinja

Altools’ AlZip is where it’s at. It has a free trial which is fully featured and never expires.

You can even open ISOs with it.
- howaboutthisdangit
  
  7Zip opens ISOs, too, though I prefer mounting them using the Pismo File Mount Audit Package. Free, not a trial.
Jorpho

IZArc is my choice. Looks almost like WinZip, and it’s still free. (It’s wrapped in OpenCandy now, but that’s easy to get around.)

Now, WinRAR is something I might always need to keep around. And paying $40 for it can wait.
- Keith Abramson
  
  no need to buy winrar – check out rarzilla.
  - ocker3
    
    I believe 7zip also opens Rars
    - http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
      
      7zip opens everything except ACEs, due to some patent thing. older versions of 7zip may still do it, though.
http://twitter.com/intensitystudio Antonio Carrasco

Love how the commentariat feels the need to share their file decompression tool of choice.
- historydenier
  
  Yeah, in a post about a file decompression tool, no less! How… on-topic…
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Shane-Simmons/100000053744641 Shane Simmons
    
    Yeah, what’s that all about? It’s almost like a cartoon about a Windows file compression app started a conversation about Windows file compression apps. How dare people discuss such things!
L_Mariachi

One wonders at what point does a company say “There’s a totally free alternative to our product that works better and everybody knows about now, let’s just cut our losses and write this thing off.” At least Stuffit has the rationale that there are still .sit and .cpt archives floating around, but even there the expander is free. (I don’t think anyone is making any new Stuffit archives.) What’s WinZip’s reason to exist?
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  All of those people still paying for AOL
hanoverfiste

I remember when Winzip rolled on the scene, I was like what happened to PKWARE. I did a search, this was a long time ago so it was on Altavista and found an article (before Wikipedia) to read about Phil Katz’s demise.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz So if anything I wish I registered the shareware version of PKZIP back in the 80s. A school friend and I had our own shareware company and 3 people actually registered in far away states. We got a request to be featured in a shareware mail catalog but didn’t respond in time.
http://www.facebook.com/dan.morrison.nz Dan Morrison

Terribly dated gag, but yes, I really did pay for winzip once back in the day. O_O
I realized I used it daily and had installed it free on every Windows machine I’d serviced for my family. It just made my life that much better to have the nag screen go away.
I did have and use PKZip 7Zip and WinRAR for other uses (IIRC for gluing illicit usenet binaries back together) but still the winzip icon was never far away. That was last century however..