winuha

File sizes have been a big issue in the world of computing since day one, and despite the fact that our hard drives are bigger than ever, large files are still a source of irritation for many. How many times, for instance, have you tried to send a movie clip to a friend only for the email to bounce back due to size restrictions imposed by the service provider? Usually in this case we turn to our old friends WinZip or WinRAR, but believe it or not, there is another compression format that produces smaller file sizes than these popular tools.

WinUHA provides a graphical interface for UHARC, a command-line application, which is proven to have the best compression ratio around, achieving rates of 10-20 percent better than RAR or ZIP. The original version is very slow and has no graphical interface, which prompted this developer to open up the format to the public at large.

The program doesn’t do a bad job either, operating in a very similar way to WinZip and, aside from an annoying donation screen, allows you to get down to business pretty quickly, adding files to the archive with a single click or by dragging them into the clearly laid-out directory window.

With broadband connections or WiFi set up almost anywhere you go, and portable devices like USB keys offering bigger storage space than ever before, you'd think file compression technology would become obsolete. Surprisingly though, archiving applications are still very popular with users, thanks to extra features like encryption or file repair.

A few years back, having Winzip on your PC was a prerequisite, but with time many more versatile competitors and better compression formats have popped up. Nowadays the name of the game is not really the size of compressions but securing your files and quickly transmitting them to other users. We've chosen 6 different compression utilities to put to the test.

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