PentaZip - Software Review - Evaluation - Brief Article

Home Office Computing, July, 2000 by Marshall F. Lager

HOC RATING 12345678

IT TAKES AN AWFUL LOT TO MAKE A FILE compression and decompression utility stand out from the crowd, but PentaWare has pulled it off with PentaZip ($40 boxed, $30 download; 480-491-0642, www.pentazip.com). This high-powered program impressed us with support for 14 methods and nine levels of compression, a file viewer for zipped and unzipped archives, a scheduler for regular file compression, and the ability to create self-extracting and disk-spanning archives. There's a laundry list of features here, and we liked them all.

The program is comfy as well as technically competent--most of PentaZip's functions can be used straight from Windows Explorer. It's useful for the casual archivist, but it's also overkill: Many users can get by with a freeware archiver. If you need to do serious file manipulation, though, PentaZip is a potent challenger to the category king WinZip.

RATINGS

HOME OFFICE COMPUTING rates products on a scale of 1 to 10--with few 9's or 10's--based on value, performance, innovation (medals go to rare standouts in these areas), ease of use, and suitability for home offices. The A and B symbols indicate pros and cons.

Rating: 8