Many people use Winzip to compress their files and folders. It works very well, but there are programs that even work better on some occasions.
One such program is called 7zip. It not only opens and compresses zip files, it also works with 7z, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR.Â Besides these , it can also unpack pack many other formats.
I first found this tool to be very handy when opening “non-normal” zip file formats, but now I am using it so much more. I now use this free (as in open source) program as my primary zip file utility.
It is very easy to use, but one of the most impressive things is how well it compresses files. You can see the ratios at Engtech’s Blog.