ZipGenius Standard

When there is not enough free space on a hard drive, a good solution is to add data to archives. It is also a safe and efficient way to send multiple files over the Internet. Compressing data can help you in many more situations, but finding a suitable software for this task may be difficult. ZipGenius Standard will meet all your demands with its powerful compression and management tools. It features an easy to understand interface which lets you work like in an explorer window. Besides adding files to archives and managing them, you can find many more functions beneath its hood.

ZipGenius is 100% freeware and there are no hidden restrictions or nag-screens. The small setup package will launch a standard wizard which will guide you through usual steps, like setting a destination path or selecting shortcuts. If you have an Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP processor and 128 Mb of RAM, you will have no trouble running the program. You can even run it with less powerful hardware on any Windows version.

The interface may seem a bit overloaded at a first glance, but if you take a better look, you will see that there is actually not much to click on. A new archive can be created by clicking the New button on the toolbar or a hyperlink on the main area of the interface. After specifying a destination path, a tabbed window will appear on the screen, where you can add files to the archive and make a series of configurations.

When creating an archive, you can select a compression level, how to compress (add, update or move files) or choose to store the relative or full path of the files. Other options, under the same tab, will include subfolders in the archive, hidden or system files, add or remove their "Archive" attributes. You can also find advanced settings for adding or excluding files by their extensions, splitting the archive into volumes, writing a readme file and adding a ZIP signature.

When you are done with the settings, you must click the Proceed button, in the lower right corner of the window and the archive will be created in the specified folder. An archive can be loaded on the interface and browsed through like in a standard explorer window. You can even load multiple archives at once and view them under separate navigation tabs. Once the archive is loaded, its contained folders will be displayed in a tree structure, on the left side of the window and its files on the right. Files can be added or removed at any time with the aid of the options on the toolbar. You can also access the files from the archive.