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Is WinZip still worth updating?

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oblivion:
I've had a paid license for WinZip since the Nico Mac days.

I've been getting more and more reluctant to stay current with it; I have the ability to create zipfiles with Directory Opus, my primary file manager, and if I want better than "normal" zip compression there's always 7zip...

But I still regard Winzip as the de facto standard, despite all this.

So now Winzip's on v16 and they want me to upgrade from my 15.5 license. They're trying to tempt me with a freebie WinZip Courier license.

I can't see a good reason to go for it. Apart from the fact that they seem to want me to keep paying for something I already have and the only important new functionality in recent years is effectively proprietary technology that only reduces my confidence that I can unzip a zipfile with pretty much anything including native Windows. The last couple of upgrades haven't given me anything new that I've cared about and I can't see that this one will either. I like the interface but rarely use it, because the shell integration is actually all I need about 80% of the time.

So... what does everyone think? Do I finally cut WinZip loose, on the assumption that the program's sailing off into the sunset pretty much regardless and it might as well do it without my investment? Or am I missing something that might be (or become) important if I don't upgrade again?

Josh:
People still use Winzip?

oblivion:
People still use Winzip?
-Josh (February 07, 2012, 03:58 AM)
--- End quote ---

That's one answer I thought I might get.  ;)

Josh:
If I were you, remember this is my personal opinion, I would move to a tool like WinRAR. I have paid a SINGLE license fee, and never had to pay again. Now, if they were to swap to a per major version upgrade fee, or every so often, I would gladly support them because of how much I have gotten from my license. WinRAR was at V3 for how long and still had major format support added to it?

IainB:
Do you need it?
I thought that WinZip was made obsolete in XP, by Microsoft building the ZIP/Unzip functionality into the system/Shell, so I always uninstalled WinZip if it was installed - it would have been just an unnecessary system overhead.
Windows 7 has ZIP/Unzip functionality built-in to the system/Shell too.
I presume the same is true for Windows Vista?

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