If you are looking for a free alternative to WinZIP and WinRAR and you don’t want to use 7zip, you may want to use jZip. Even although it is not officially supported, you can extract Windows 7 themes with it and extract all those pictures and wallpapers stored inside.
About jZip
jZip is a powerful and reliable compression utility. jZip is based on proven and reliable 7-Zip archiving technology by Igor Pavlov. jZip sports an elegant, easy to use yet powerful user interface.
You can download jZip from http://www.jzip.com/
jZip vs. 7zip
Let’s take a quick look at the file extensions of jZip and 7zip:
Vs. the many, many file extensions of 7zip:
Looks like 7zip is the clear winner when it comes to file extensions!
jZip / 7zip benchmarks?
So, who’s extracting files faster? 7zip or jZip. I haven’t found any good benchmarks online, so it looks like I will have to compare the two myself.
Better Compression Rates? Innovation?
I tried compressing some files with WinZIP/WinRAR and 7ZIP/jZIP. jZip is based on 7Zip and delivers the same results (obviously). 7zip is compressing better, faster and it’s free. But jZip delivers the same results as 7zip – where’s the innovation?
jZip is still not the most user-friendly program, even creating a 7zip archive rather than a zip archive is rather complicated (at least I need more clicks than in 7zip). Also, browsing in jZIp is a joke and not working well so far, if at all.
So, all in all, I will continue to use 7zip, but I will keep an eye on jZip to see if they can come up with anything innovative. I don’t like to say it, but so far it looks like a small copy of 7zip, something we already have. Where’s the REAL innovation?
