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.

After many years on the market, it's pretty clear that WinRAR is one of the most useful applications out there, although there are a bunch of developers who tried to steal the lion's share in this particular software segment with some free utilities.

In case you are looking for dedicated tools to secure your files, you can always protect your data with a password, while the “Repair” function comes in handy whenever you try to fix a broken archive.

Besides the fact that it does a great job when it comes to compressing files, WinRAR also integrates dedicated 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 happen in your case too, at least if your computer is able to handle the task. The only problems you could experience are strictly related to hardware resources, as working with three or four archives at the same time could be a bit overwhelming for slower computers.

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.