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Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

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f0dder:
That sounds very strange, y2kusuma!

I registered WinRAR back in... humm... it was the very first thing I registered when I finally got a VISA card, so it's quite a few years ago. And I've just checked, it works fine with the latest 4.10 beta 5. Deal with rarlabs.com instead of win-rar.com :)

I'm actually surprised they still offer lifetime upgrades, and IMHO it's a big failure for companies to do so. Eventually, they'll have saturated their user base, and then they'll have to launch new products or pull some nasty tricks and drop the lifetime upgrade support. Better to be realistic...

And besides that, the .rar fileformat doesn't have any (big) benefits over the other compressed fileformats that makes it worth to pay for.
Nor the illusion of 'support' from any of these suppliers.-Ath (December 18, 2011, 05:43 AM)
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It wasn't until 7-zip that there was a competitive compression format with both speed and size - and it took a while before 7-zip on high compression settings got fast. And are there any of the other archivers that support advanced features like saving NTFS alternate data streams and security ACLs? On top of that, WinRAR has pretty flexible commandline support, and at least 7-zip comes nowhere near that.

I also find the GUIs of the other archivers I've tried to be, well, sucky. WinRAR is lean and mean :-)

That said, it's 7-zip I put on friends and relatives computers, since it fits their needs and is gratis. Heck, it (mostly) fits my needs too, and I also do like that the archive format and code is open. These days, I could probably live with the less polished product, since I mostly do unarchiving and my archiving is scripted through the commandline...

Curt:
Just had a response from winRar:

Please note that in the past we have had several promotion campaigns, offering WinRAR version-specific licenses with significant price discounts. For users who have bought such a license, the lifetime upgrade text is no longer valid and to avoid confusion we have taken it out from our websites.

For all the other WinRAR customers, who have purchased a regular license (even if the purchase has been made in 2005 or 2003 for example), we still offer free upgrades and updates. There are no indications that this policy will change in the near future.

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Clear enough!
-Darwin (March 14, 2011, 10:38 AM)
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Cloq:
I am glad WinRar is grandfathering in customers that had purchased license with lifetime upgrades.

I personally see nothing wrong if they are changing their licensing agreement for new customers, just don't pooch your old customers by virtually tearing up the old contract and shoving the new one down their throats. 

I feel like that I made an investment in a early/startup company by purchasing their product based on certain features and promotions, fully knowing that the company may or may not prosper.

f0dder:
I personally see nothing wrong if they are changing their licensing agreement for new customers, just don't pooch your old customers by virtually tearing up the old contract and shoving the new one down their throats.-Cloq (December 18, 2011, 11:49 AM)
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Yeah. Unfortunately, what are you going to do as a software developer when you see that there's no longer new purchases of your software? I think most of the companies that start out by offering lifetime upgrades sincerely belive that they're going to be able to do that, and don't like it when they have to retract that.

What makes me angry is when they don't have the balls to admit they were wrong, but try to hide the fact by "discontinuing" the product, and launch a "new product" that's basically just a major version upgrade of the old. It might be legal, but it definitely smells.

rarlab.com doesn't offer any "insurance" by the way, while win-rar.com adds the "WinRAR Maintenance" package to your shopping cart automatically... neither of the sites specifically mention anything about the lifetime for licenses, though.

y2kusuma:
I *feel* certain that WinRAR does not offer lifetime keys, because even the "1-year of maintenance, including the right to upgrade (within that year)" is $6.14 extra!:
-Curt (December 18, 2011, 06:38 AM)
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rarlab.com doesn't offer any "insurance" by the way, while win-rar.com adds the "WinRAR Maintenance" package to your shopping cart automatically... neither of the sites specifically mention anything about the lifetime for licenses, though.
-f0dder (December 18, 2011, 03:04 PM)
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That's why I emailed them first to ask if they still offer lifetime upgrades. And they clearly states they still offer it.

I also ask in second email about Maintenance Package :

"Thank you for your answer. If so then what does maintenance package-upgrade assurance mean? It says that I get latest version during 1 year period. Is there any fine print that I missed?"

The answer :

"The Maintenance Package guarantees upgrades and priority support. As I mentioned previously, our private customers who purchase a license are provided upgrades either way. The maintenance funds go primarily into product development and are generally oriented toward business customers."

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