Review by Admiralu

The new WinZip has been upgraded with a variety of useful features. Installation was quick and easy. WinZip has been the consumer standard for compression, and they have branched out and separated the software into various editions including a Courier for email, a self extractor, utilities malware protection and so on. This review covers the standard edition, WinZip 17. This standard has a lot of great new features that make it more useful than ever. WinZip can now convert doc, docx (Word files), xls, xlsx (Excel files) and ppt, pptx (PowerPoint files) by selecting the Convert to PDF box in the Create tab and simply dragging your document into the work area. That alone is fantastic. By selecting options beforehand, you can encrypt your files (Winzip wipes and deletes any temporary files so they cannot be recovered, great protection option). You can right click and create zip files straight from Windows Explorer, sort columns by clicking on headers, processes files such as RAR, 7Z, ISO, IMG, BZ2, BZ, TBZ,TBZ2, TAR, Z, GZ, TGZ, LZH, LHA, CAB, UUencode, BinHex & MIME files. There are even iOS & Android apps for Apple & Google devices. You can resize images (great for compressing large photos). You can even add Watermarks to your Files with the extensions of BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, PNG and TIF. The toolbars are very easy to use and are context sensitive, adapting to the task you are working on. Another great new feature is sharing with your social media accounts. You can post any type of file to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with ZipShare. You can also send large files up to 2GB from your email account with ZipSend. For me the best new feature is the access to cloud files. WinZip will connect to Dropbox, SkyDrive, Box and Google Drive. You can save a ton of space by zipping files to your cloud accounts or extracting to them. File compression can be customized to your specifications and is quick and fast. I love being able to convert documents to quick PDFs (no it doesn’t have the features of Acrobat or Create PDF, but it gets the job done if you need an Office document converted to share or send). The Cloud integration is excellent. Just link WinZip to the service or services you use and you can zip or extract to them in a few minutes. WinZip makes the setup for this a breeze. This is particularly good for large size files or photos since extra space costs $$. I have used WinZip before and this new edition is the best ever. While many complain about the cost, WinZip is really an excellent product. I have tried several other compression programs like 7Zip (shareware) and Power Archiver. 7Zip for me is a great hassle. We have it at work and it is useless because even though it is installed on some machines, co-workers have a difficult time opening files so I never use it. When we had WinZip, everything ran smoothly. It may not be the most advanced compression option, the Pro Version has more advanced features, but it is certainly the easiest to use and the new features make it worth it. Connection to the Cloud drives and quick PDF conversion are the features I use most often and it is fast and easy. There is also plenty of help available if needed and you can right click for more options. I highly recommend WinZip 17, Corel has stepped up their game for usefulness. A new must have.