Winrar - will it stop working after 40 days ?

Winrar - will it stop working after 40 days if I dont buy a liscence ?

 

no...they say that...but ive used the same copy for over 3 months before.... after the 40 days you just get a lame popup every time you use it...

i now have a wonderful full version, that i use

 

I've used the same install for well over a year before, and no problems. The pop-up asking you to register every time you open the program gets a little annoying, but it's not a deal-breaker.

 

It'll keep working. Switch to 7zip though. Much better program, *and* it's completely free with no nag screens.

 

Another assurance - It'll work just fine with a nag screen ^^

 

It'll work just fine. Like phil823 said, you'll just get a popup everytime you open it (that's if you double click it). What I do, I just right click on the file and select the "Extract here" option. It's faster to do it that way and it skips the annoying little popup.

Thanks for that. I'll probably give it a try when I get home.

 

Actually you don't get the nag screen at all if WinRAR is opened by action via compressed files. It is when you open Winrar manually that the "reminder" comes up.



EDIT: Thibault beat me to it.

 

I've had .7z files compress about 5 times better than .zip and .rar. (When I compressed some files I needed to email to someone, I got a 50mb archive with zip/rar, and... 9mb with 7z. More commonly, the difference is around 20%, I think)

That said, 7zip can also generate regular zip files, and open zip and rar. Overall, it just rocks.

 

I'm not really up to date with the compressed file technology (if you even call it that). Last time I heard, .rar was the new thing and was much better than .zip. Never heard of .7z before.
Well to be honest I rarely need to compress files, so I mainly use Winrar to extract downloaded files from their .rar format (or whatever other format). I was just about to ask you if 7zip could open .zip and .rar file types. Since it can (and since you say it's better than the other file types) and since it's free I'll give it a try.

 

yea some people use 7Zip but winrar is still good. thats the most common.
but 7zip supports winrar files.....

Still WINRAR FTW!!

 

Try un/compressing a 4GB zip or rar with any program other than Winrar.

 

So what happens if you try that?

 

I use ALZip. It does all the normal things you need and it's free. 7zip works, but it always seemed clunky to me and ALZip seems very clean. They both get the job done though.

 

In my experience Winrar is the only one the doesn't fail doing so.

Most other un/compression apps will fail at this 70% of the time, and just leave you with corrupt files or just won't finish the process.

 

As far as I know, winzip is the only one that can't do it. I'll try though.
Pretty sure I've done it before with 7zip with no problems. I'll try again though. It's definitely a valid point, so worth testing.

 

Yea, let me know the results as I don't think I tried 7zip for heavy use like that.

I know Winzip, TUGZip, IZArc, Quick Zip, failed me.

 

I'll wait to see what Jalf has to say about this. I'll wait before I switch over to 7zip.

 

First results are in (on my T60, 2GB RAM, Core Duo 2GHz)
The files I'm compressing is a bunch of CD images (.iso, .mdf and a few others, I just grabbed enough to get over 4GB)

7zip (solid archive, normal compression, .7z format, multithreading on):
Worked fine. No problems with file size > 4GB
Uncompressed size: 6.19GB
Compressed: 5.43GB
Time: 39 minutes

Running the same test with winrar and .rar file now.

(I should probably mention that the main reason I prefer 7zip is... I like the icon better... Always hated how ugly the winrar icon is... Bunch of purple and green books, wtf? Looks like something from Win3.1. Call me weird, but that sort of stuff can really annoy me )

Edit: Preliminary result:
Oof, Winrar is definitely more CPU intensive... On the 7zip test, I really didn't notice it running in the background (both are set to run at high priority). With Winrar, my computer is sluggish as hell. Interesting to see if that makes it finish faster as well.
Edit2: Well, passed the 39 minute mark, and WinRar is 51% done. Looks like we're in for a long haul here...

 

WinRar (solid archive, normal compression, .rar format, multithreading on):
Worked fine. No problems with file size > 4GB
Uncompressed size: 6.19GB
Compressed: 5.43GB
Time: 81 minutes

So, same compression ratio on the files I tested with, both can handle large file sizes. But 7Zip is about twice as fast, and uses less CPU to boot. (When I checked task manager, 7z used around 70%, while WinRar was 85-95%, and subjectively, it was a huge difference. I didn't notice 7z running in the background, while everything became sluggish with WinRar.

 

Thanks for the information, Jalf! I'll give 7zip a try.

 

Yeah, i'm going to give 7zip a try too. I hope it works on vista because it sounds good.

 

Thanx mate for the results....Repped ya big time

me switching to 7zip....

 

Good test Jalf. I might install 7zip and still keep winrar. Time will tell which one I like better.

LOL@ hating on the icon.

 

Yes, go for 7zip! Open Source, works great.

 

Who hates what icon? The winrar icon? You know you can change it right? Using one of your tweaks.

 

Not referring to me ......I'm referring to .....

 

Oh wow, h's pretty picky.

 

But the 7zip icon looks nice!

Also wtf? I log in, and see that I've been repped 3 times in a row for this month-old thread...

 

Give IZarc a shot to. Open source and will open absolutely anything.

 

This doesn't look like being 64-bit compatible

 

PKwares PKZip program used to be good but it costs. They're the chaps who invented zip files apparently. I used to use it quite a lot when I was sending secure zip/sit files containing magazine layouts to printers as it was the only one I found to be reliable for massive files (98 pages of large format print ready scans etc exceeding 50mb each soon racks up the size).

But... I reinstalled Windows a few years back and forgot to write down my licence key, didn't fancy buying it again so got 7zip. Not looked back since it's done everything PKZip can and just as well. Oh, it works on 64bit Vista HP too which was nice!

 

I just had to compress 270MB of files (basically all the assets for the app I'm making at work. That is, source code, dll's and a few images) and just for fun, I tried again with both WinRAR and 7Zip:

With these files, 7zip gave me around 20% smaller output, but took a bit longer to finish.
So it seems that in the worst case, they provide the same compression ratio (but 7zip does it faster, which is nice), and in the best case.
Combined with 7zip having a nicer icon, being open-source and working on 64-bit... And not having a nag-screen when you launch it, there's not much reason to run WinRar


And another interesting observation.Solid archives make a *huge* difference.
My 270MB files take around 70MB without solid archives enabled, and.... 8-10mb (8 for 7zip, 10 for winrar) with solid archive enabled.