WinZip: now for digital cameras!

[pne]

Many moons ago, I registered WinZip, since it was then the de facto ZIP tool for Windows—there was no competition in the graphical world back then that I was aware of.

So I get email from them every once in a while telling me about new versions and suggesting that I upgrade.

But really, for the past several years, it's been amusing seeing what they come up with to put into new versions.

See, zipping is really not rocket science. After a while, you have the basic operations pretty much down, and the application is essentially feature-complete.

So it's fun to see what they grasp at to justify extracting an upgrade fee from their customers. For example, lossless JPEG (re-?)compression, zipping straight from cameras, image viewing inside archives, new encryption methods... all not really part of their "core competencies" IMO.

It's all rather amusing, really.

Comments

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, browsing inside an archive without extracting it first is pretty useful. But not enough that I would pay for an upgrade.

What I wast to know is why more operating systems don't already include more comprehensive compression tools that would make antiquated solutions like WinZip unnecessary.

[jixel.livejournal.com]

wow they still exist? i thought with "archiving" built into OSes it's a done deal for any "third party" apps, esp since they should be getting their fees from OS sales, non?

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

The likes of Winzip shouldn't be earning any money from OS Sales because the actual compression algorithm used in the program is not proprietary software, but is in fact shareware created by someone else entirely (See Wikipedia entries for WinZip & PKZIP). All you're really paying for with WinZip is the front-end and the various utilities that come with it (such as self-extracting archive creation). As far as zip-support being built into the OS, it's not the WinZip interface that's used - e.g. in Windows, it's just an adapted version of explorer.

[jixel.livejournal.com]

ah right. yeah it's been a while. i remember when w'zip first came out it was kinda cute to have a win wrapper for pkzip and the clones. i spose it's the pkzip people that get royalties from bill (if anyone actually does at all)

still, aside from self-extracting (who needs it?) you can just use the OS for all that. there's even a winRAR which for some reason people felt the need to go to RAR in recent years too, any clue about why?

that said, i did install some shell extension in my windows that works great, right click and you get all the options you want and it was free. forget the name of it tho. if interested i could drudge it up somehow.

[pne.livejournal.com]

i spose it's the pkzip people that get royalties from bill (if anyone actually does at all)

Nobody does - the PKZIP format can be used royalty-free.

Which is, in my mind, why it ended up so successful, because everyone can implement a ZIP compressor/decompressor by reference to the specification.

I remember back when ARJ and ZIP were both fairly wide-spread, with similar compression rates; ARJ seemed to be a bit ahead since it was (arguably) more featureful and sometimes compressed a tad better.

But I haven't seen an ARJ archive in years, and I think this is because of the availability of third-party ZIP tools but no third-party ARJ ones (because the ARJ compression code is proprietary).

Or look at RAR; it has its niche, but it doesn't have the popularity that ZIP does - perhaps also because it's not possible to create a RAR compressor without paying someone licence fees.

(There are free-of-charge *de*compressors for several proprietary formats, but that's only half the battle.)