Specific programs have grown in popularity due to new necessities that arose among PC users. As we use the Internet and download different compression formats such as rar or zip, essential tools are required for the everyday use such as files compressors. One of them is 7-zip.

The huge quantity of information that circulates on the web nowadays, and the constantly growing file sizes, mean that you need a good file compressor vital to be able to transfer your files more easily. Whether they’re work documents, photos or games, or anything else you have on your computer, you can compress them and decompress them using 7-zip.

This app, designed for more specialist users, features a compression rate which is double that of the normal rate of the Zip format (the most widely used format when it comes to file compression). 7-zip is a piece of software that can work both via the command line or via a graphical user interface.

By default, 7-zip is configured to create file archives with the 7z extension. This format has a modular architecture, unicode filenames, large-file support (up to 4GB), archive header compression, and more. These characteristics mean that archives can contain multiple files and folders and can also be password protected.

Installing and using 7-zip is very similar to WinZip and WinRAR, two other compressors that are already well-established on the market. As for its user interface, despite being fairly basic and not very attention-grabbing, it has all the essential features for compressing files, along with more complex tools for the average user, such as options for using LZMA compression, changing the size of the dictionary and blocks, both of which appear in the file creation window.

One of the downsides of using 7-zip is that, if you have problems opening an archive, 99% of the time it will be because the archive contains incorrect headers. Other compressors would be able to open some of these archives, even with incorrect headers, but only because they simply ignore the errors. Another weakness of the program is that, although it has a powerful compression engine, this does require the computer to have quite a lot of RAM.

Taking everything into account you can see that this program is a pretty good alternative to others of its type. It’s up to each user to give it a try and see if it suits them or not.

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