WinRAR 5.21

Overview

One of the most common software around, a must have for any PC users, WinRAR is a powerful file archiver and data compression application. With a clean and intuitive interface and a large number of additional functions WinRAR is a tool that helps you managing your compressed archives.

Installation

The installation process couldn’t be more simple, after downloading and lunching the software's kit a window will pop up that allows you to select the destination path and let you know few things about the software such as a small description and EULA. After clicking the install button and waiting a few seconds for the installation to finish, WinRAR is ready to use but not before selecting the associated files and shortcut settings.

Interface

The interface is really intuitive and simple to use, adding files to an archive, extracting, testing, deleting or viewing archives it's just a click away thanks to the eight big buttons on the toolbar from the top that also includes the wizard, a step by step guide on how to unpack, create or add files to an existing archive, info, find and repair buttons. Those can be customized by either by right-clicking the toolbar and “select buttons” or by going to the settings in the option menu (or by hitting ctr+s) where the toolbar settings are found in the general tab.

Also from the settings you have a large variety of options you can customize like changing the paths for the temporary files, the start-up folder from the “paths” tab, the way files are shown and open in WinRAR from “file list” tab, the associated extensions and customization of the WinRAR shortcuts from the “integration” tab.

The “Commands” and “Tools” tabs above the toolbar provides you with additional features you can use and their assigned key shortcuts for most of them. One of the important feature you can find there is “convert archive to SFX” that allows you to transform an archive to an self-extracting file that will not require any decompressing tool to extract it.

Another important feature of WinRAR is the ability to split archives, that way even if your file is bigger then what a CD or DVD can fit you can split it on the desired size. That is done by selecting your desired file or folder you want to split, right-clicking and selecting add files to archive and on the window that will pop you will find “split to volumes” in the left bottom corner. There are some preset sizes for floppy disk, CD, DVD but you can also select your desired size by typing it - note that the size will be in bytes though.

Pros:

• Multilanguage support with over 45 language versions.
• Multi OS support, available for Windows, DOS, OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX and Pocket PC
• Supports most of the archive types (RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZIP, ACE, UUE, BZIP2, JAR, ISO, Z, 7-ZIP)
• Easy-to-use interface

Cons:

• Slower than some competitors

Conclusion

WinRAR with his simple and intuitive interface and with many useful features and tools offers the users all they can request from a file archiver software, making it a must-have. All these added up made me give him 5/5 stars.