I'll start a sort of "bi-monthly post" as from this week, titled Useful Apps, in which I'll TRY to make you discover a new application, or one that I use often. It might help you, just as it helped me. Most of these apps will be freeware/open-sourced. Say twice per month or so. Might be more frequent. Might be rarer.
So, this week's candidate is... *drum roll* IZARC!
IZArc is what people will call, a free alternative to the popular WinRAR. In fact, that's how I came across it. I was looking for free Zip programs to use, and after using 7Zip for quite a while, I was sorely missing a very useful feature from WinRAR which is called "Extract to Separate Folders". This allowed me to select a bunch of archives, and have them extract to each one's separate folders. Eg. 1.zip, 2.zip, 3.zip would extract to folders 1,2,3 and with their subfolders if any.
7Zip did not offer me that facility. WinRAR was not free. Possible choices were: IZArc, Zip Genius and some other names. Just google "WinRAR freeware alternatives" and come up with your own list. Some offered me "Extract to Separate Folders", but none offered me the simplicity of IZArc.
As you can see from above, the interface of IZArc is really clean and friendly, and a bit WinRAR like. I like this simplicity. The task of extraction is furthur simplified since IZArc integrates with your Explorer shell, as shown in the menu above. Vista is also supported. Like WinRAR and others, IZArc offers the common things people look for, like self extractor, test archive, backgrounding tasks, and more.
Regarding compatibility, IZArc supports:
7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO.
As you can see, the list is quite extensive, including: ZIP, RAR, IMG, ISO, NRG. This means that IZArc can open ISO files generated by your burning program, and you can extract the contents like an archive. Pretty nice and useful.
Nothing much to say more, except that it's the best Archive manager I came across till now. It's freeware, and spyware-free. It's totally worth the download. If you want a new Archive manager, give it a try. No regrets from me, and no complaints till now.
For more info, check their site.
And for people who want portability, check out IZArc2Go, the same greatness, but portable! Very useful if you need to extract/pack something on the go, without the need to install anything. Run IZArc2Go from your flash drive or portable media, and you are off.
File sizes: ~3.5MB
