Traditionally the first choice when it comes to compressing and uncompressing files, WinZip is one of the most popular downloads of all time. Despite the fact that its competitors have caught up somewhat, it remains a simple way to archive programs and reduce file sizes.

Much of WinZip's success has been down to its simplicity. From the outset, the program prompts you to choose between Classic mode and Wizard mode. The wizard is great for beginners, although even the classic interface is easily negotiated, giving you instant access to a range of features such as compression ratios, password-protection and a Favorites list.

While archiving files in WinZip is quick and easy, you can't help but thinking that the program has lost some ground on its competitors. For instance, the compression rates aren’t as high as they are in WinRAR, and you can only save files in Zip format rather than RAR, ISO or JAR.

Nevertheless, WinZip performs its function well, helping you archive files quickly and effectively.

Download WinZip 17.5 build 10480 in Softonic

In this application also Tools, Tools to open TaskManager, Regedit, etc. which is locked by a virus.

More light, cheap, and has many additional features, This application is only measuring less than 3 MB, and also has 10 professional skins. In addition, this application also uses sound to notify warnings or notices, making it easy to understand.

Users may not rummaged in the Folder Protection, because it will create a folder Protection can not be opened. And should not be breaking into applications with other tools.

Download Folder Protection 2.5.6 in Softonic

Using the program is a pleasant experience - at the most basic level, add the files you want to compress/decompress using the file explorer on the right and chose the action you want from the main toolbar or by right clicking. The PeaZip interface is fresh and easy-to-use with a few built-in themes to spice things up.

Right-clicking on a file or folder and choosing Add to archive or Browse path with PeaZip will also provide direct access to the program's factions. The compression/decompression process is very quick and smooth, and there are impressive advanced options for users who want to get a little more technical.

Among the best of these advanced PeaZip features are the encryption/password options, compression variables, and the File tools, which allow you to split files, join them and even view the checksum files. PeaZip really impressed us - it's a top-class program that performs at a really high level, and is a worthy rival to apps such as WinZip or 7Zip.

PeaZip is a fantastic program for all your compressing/decompressing needs.

Download PeaZip 4.9.1 in Softonic

Monkey’s Audio is a lossless audio compressor which aims to reduce the size of audio files as much as possible without losing any sound quality. The program uses its own file format, .ape, which is known to have a better compression rate than the lossless FLAC format, but files tend to be larger than lossy compression formats like MP3 or AAC.

We recommend using Monkey’s Audio to compress audio CDs to your PC. Your songs will not lose their quality but will take up less space than if they were uncompressed. What’s more, Monkey’s Audio handles tag support, keeping all your file information, like artist name, track numbers and playing time.

Monkey’s Audio can decompress files back to their original type without losing any quality and the program features an option to verify the MD5 checksum of compressed files. Compressed .ape files can play in any of the major media players and the program can also install a plug-in to compress audio files directly from Winamp.

Monkey’s Audio is a great solution if you’re worried about losing any quality when compressing audio files. However, because it only compresses to .ape, you’re pretty much stuck with playing your converted files on your PC. To enjoy them on your mobile music player you’ll have to use another program, like dbpowerAMP Music Converter or Switch Free, to convert your audio files to MP3 or AAC, which remain the most widely supported audio formats.

Download Monkey's Audio 4.10 in Softonic

With Eazel Compressor 3 you will be able to: - Compress in ZIP, 7Z, TAR, and WIM formats. - Unzip file format ZIP, RAR, ARJ, CAB, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, Z and many others. - Add ZipCrypto and AES-256 encryption passwords, which ensures maximum safety.

The most strong point of Eazel Compressor 3 is its compression algorithm. Thanks to him, you will reduce the size of all files dramatically. In this way, you will free up space on your hard disk at the time you gain in portability.

Eazel Compressor 3 is perfect for users who want a simple but yet powerful compressor. In addition, is multilingual and totally free.

Download Eazel 3.06 in Softonic

Easy to use interface scans, collects, displays and exports license information from your computer Accurately searches for software license information on your local computer and network computers The database supports more than 3,600 software vendors and products including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Adobe products, O&O Software products, Acronis products, Electronic Arts games, WinZip products, Nero products and many more Our database gets updated frequently and additional program licensing definitions are added on a daily basis to be up-to-date

Our always growing and updated database currently support more than 3,600 vendors and software products. Product Key Finder supports scanning of local computers as well as remote network computers. You can export (Word, Excel, PDF, HTML, CSV and XML) or print your license information from within Product Key Finder and store these in a safe place for backup reasons.

Product Key Finder is typically being used by home users as well as corporate admins.

Download UpdateStar Product Key Finder 7 in Softonic

Some will argue that WinRAR isn’t as quick as rival WinZip at compressing files. However, for the small time difference, WinRAR leaves you with a significantly smaller archived file at the end of the process. What’s more, the application allows you to save files into both .ZIP and .RAR formats, with bunches of options for speeding up compression times and reducing file sizes.

Although many newcomers might be put off by the sheer range of features and settings within WinRAR, the interface doesn’t take long to get accustomed to, and if you’re still really stuck there’s a simple wizard-based system that walks you through the process of extracting or compressing. All this adds up to make WinRAR a dependable utility that performs better than any other tool in its class.

Boasting more compression options, higher compression rates and smaller file sizes than WinZip, WinRAR is now the undisputed market leader in file compression.

Download WinRAR 4.20 (64 bit) in Softonic

What's the story behind Slender?

The myth of Slender started quite simply as a rumor and has also been popularized as an internet meme. The story is that Slender Man is a mythical creature often depicted as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a blank face.

According to legend, Slenderman can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages on his back. Slender Man can cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, coughing fits (nicknamed "slendersickness"), photographic and video distortions and can teleport at will.

How to play Slender

The basic premise of the game is the more directly you come in contact with the Slender Man, the faster your sanity drains. You therefore have to careful not to look at the enemy for too long and remember that your flashlight has a limited battery so you must turn it off from time to time to save it. Also, the more you sprint, the lower your maximum stamina becomes, so you must sprint only when you need to.

The controls to the game are simple:

Mouse -- Look around
W,A,S & D -- Move
Left Shift -- Sprint
Left Mouse Click -- Pick up pages
Right Mouse Click -- Flashlight
Q & E -- Zoom in/out

Is it scary?

Slender does well in creating quite a creepy atmosphere for a very basic game. It feels like just you, your torch and the sound of crickets chirping as you fumble your way through the forest looking for manuscripts. However, the overall aim of collecting 8 pages of the manuscript is quite limited and so the gameplay is a bit limited.

Technical issues

Note that you'll need WinZip or WinRAR to unpack this Slender game download.

Since Slender was originally released, there have been several spinoffs with varying degrees of quality. We tested them on the Softonic staff to see which one is the scariest so don't forget to check out how they got on:

Conclusion

Slender is an eerie horror game that's well worth trying whether or not you've ever heard of the Slender Man myth.

Download Slender: The Eight Pages 0.9.7 Beta in Softonic

Backups are increasingly important in an age of huge hard drives and large amounts of data that if lost, could be disastrous.

The best thing to do is automate backups so that you don't have to worry about them anymore. JaBack allows you to make automated backups of your important data, files and folders and save them immediately in ZIP format. The advantage of this is that you don't need any special software to unzip backups - you can simply use WinZip or WinRAR. Alternatively, the program supports the backing up of files to a remote location via FTP or options to Email it to your mail server. You can schedule backups so you don't need to worry about remembering to backup your more important data.

The danger of this however is that if the backup fails, you may not be made aware of the problem. Fortunately, the program e-mails you if this happens so you don't have to worry about bad or half done backups. You can change the date and time of filenames for archiving plus also copy files and directories using wildcards on schedule. This is useful if you need to specify a specific date for a backup that has to be performed on the same date or day every week or month.

JaBack is a fairly decent backup solution although there's no option to backup anything online and backing up can be a little slow to begin with. However, the fact that backups can be opened with a simple unarchiver make it very attractive for those looking for flexibility.

Scheduled backups and compressed output files that can be opened in any ZIP application make JaBack is a solid backup solution.

Download JaBack 9.15 in Softonic

Use Registry Optimizer to automatically build a cleaner, leaner registry based on existing valid registry entries. With a few simple steps, you can remove deleted registry entries, gaps, and fragmentation. The result? Your PC registry will be more compact, use less disk space, and consume fewer me

Anyone who need to optimize their PC. Whether they be a beginner, novice, or expert computer user.

Download WinZip Registry Optimizer 2 in Softonic

Before performing any updates, WinZip Driver Updater will produce a summary of proposed drivers for you to choose from, giving you complete control over any changes made to your system. Concerned about making changes? Don't worry. WinZip Driver Updater automatically creates a backup of your original drivers in case you should decide to roll back to a previous version. This protects your system against unforeseen driver issues and provides you with peace of mind during each driver update.

Anyone who need to optimize their PC. Whether they be a beginner, novice, or expert computer user.

Download WinZip Driver Updater 1 in Softonic

This application not only includes support for extracting virtually any kind of file compression format, it also reduces file sizes and runs on almost any version of Windows, from 98 to Windows 7.

Some will argue that WinRAR isn’t as quick as rival WinZip at compressing files. However, for the small time difference, WinRAR leaves you with a significantly smaller archived file at the end of the process. What’s more, the application allows you to save files into both .ZIP and .RAR formats, with bunches of options for speeding up compression times and reducing file sizes.

Although many newcomers might be put off by the sheer range of features and settings within WinRAR, the interface doesn’t take long to get accustomed to. If you’re still really stuck there’s a simple wizard-based system that walks you through the process of extracting or compressing. All this adds up to make WinRAR a dependable utility that performs better than any other tool in its class.

Boasting more compression options, higher compression rates and smaller file sizes than WinZip, WinRAR is now the undisputed market leader in file compression.

Download WinRAR 4.20 in Softonic

Neither the download managers that come bundled with Firefox or IE are particularly impressive so it's a good idea to add a third party downloader or plugin, like Fresh Download.

Fresh Download claims it can "turbo charge" downloads to make them download in less than half the time they would normally. Fresh Download is a program that works with both FTP and HTTP protocols and gives you a whole range of control over how downloads are completed. Included is a pause and resume feature which is very useful for broken downloads or those downloads that suddenly and annoyingly time out. Fresh Download achieves such high speeds due to its ability to connect to multiple connections and it works across most major browsers. If you don't want to carry out downloads immediately, you can also schedule them on Fresh Download for a later date and it can even download links that you've copied to your clipboard or dragged into the main interface from your desktop. If you're downloading zip files, Fresh Download can also decompress them automatically with it's own Zip extractor although note that it's not particularly powerful or fast - you'd be better using WinZip or WinRAR.

Although you won't notice huge download speeds, you will notice an improvement and besides, this is a much easier way to manage downloads.

Download Fresh Download 8.73 in Softonic

The 7-Zip interface is similar to that of its competitors, with a main file manager and a command line to search and select files to extract or compress. The control panel has the essential basics like extract, add and test, as well as copy, move and delete functions to manage your files. 7-Zip extracts and compresses files as fast as WinZip and WinRAR and handles the main archive formats like ZIP, TAR, RAR and ISO.

The archiving process is where 7-Zip differs most from its rivals. Where WinZip only lets you compress to ZIP and WinRAR to RAR or ZIP, 7zip offers you up to 5 different archive formats to choose from. 7-Zip lets you choose the update mode, depending on whether you want to add and replace files, refresh the archive or just synchronize files. If you don’t want somebody opening up your archive without your permission, you can set a password to protect your archive.

We particularly liked the split tool as it can cut up your archive into equal parts which fit on a floppy, CD or DVD, handy if you need to distribute a particularly large archive. Unfortunately, security is where 7-Zip lags behind its main rivals. There is no option to scan archives for viruses and you can’t repair damaged or corrupted files.

7-Zip might not be as secure as WinZip or WinRAR but it is definitely more versatile. It works with more archive formats and offers many useful tools like update mode or splitting. If you feel too limited by WinZip and if you don’t like WinRAR, we suggest giving 7-Zip a try and taking advantage of all its possibilities.

Infinitely more flexible than its most famous rivals, 7-Zip is a great file compression tool.

Download 7-Zip 9.22 in Softonic

The ShellExView utility displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension.

ShellExView can be used for solving context-menu problems in Explorer environment

Download ShellExView 1.67 in Softonic

If you often receive zipped, or otherwise compressed files, you'll know an extraction application is necessary. WinZip is probably the standard for PC users, but now StuffIt Expander, the long time Mac equivalent has come to Windows.

This free version only handles expansion - you can't compress your files - but unlike WinZip, StuffIt Expander will unpack many different compression formats. This includes common ones like RAR and TAR files. That alone makes it quite an improvement over the competition.

Expansion is unproblematic, and the simple interface has buttons to expand single files or groups. Destination folders can be chosen as you would expect, and that really is about it. There are no compression tools in StuffIt Expander, although they are available if you upgrade to the deluxe version.

Due to its speed, simplicity and broad compatibility, if extracting and expanding files is something you do a lot StuffIt Expander is a great solution

Download StuffIt Expander 2011 15.0.1.17 in Softonic