The first thing you notice is that WinZip for Mac features a much slicker and user friendly interface than the Windows version. However, you soon realise that it supports far fewer formats namely (ZIP, Zipx, RAR, LHA, 7Z) which offers no major advantages over Stuffit which supports thirty different file types.

WinZip has a preview feature that allows you to search the contents of an archive before you decompress it (useful when working with compressed large files) but this is nothing new for Mac users, nor is the ability to password protect compressed files.

WinZip will never be a favorite with mac users but it's generally stable and effective at dealing with the limited file types it can handle.

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RAR for Mac is from the same developer who brought you WinRAR for Mac but of course, it isn't called WinRAR for Mac because it's a Mac and not a Windows application. RAR is a powerful archive manager. It can back up your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. The application not only includes support for extracting virtually any kind of file compression format, it also boasts a no-nonsense approach to reducing file sizes.

When you download RAR, you might be confused by the fact that it's just a folder of files. This is because there is no graphical user interface for RAR. It works only via the command line using Terminal so if you've got no experience of using Terminal, then you're going to be a bit stranded. If you're willing to learn however, here's how to do it...

Place the files in any folder on your hard drive, and run the utility by typing in the full path to the application (e.g. to run from the current directory, type "./rar" or "./unrar" followed by the appropriate parameters). If you get stuck, simply type the application name (RAR or UNRAR) without any parameters to see list of useful commands.

However, this will no doubt prove too complicated for most general users and considering the fact that you have to buy a license too for RAR, there are far better applications out there such as Zipeg which is both free and has a GUI thus making it much easier to use.

RAR is a powerful compression tool and the closest thing to WinRAR for Mac but if you don't know how to run programs from the Terminal, it won't be much use to you.

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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 back up 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 emails 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, and 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.

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Handling RAR files on Mac can be quite common, so you need a solution to extract them quickly and easily.

Open up your archive with the program and it will take care of the rest. It's most important feature is handling multi part archives, quite useful when you're expanding a file containing multiple video parts for example.

RAR Expander will also work with password protected files, but you'll have to make sure you remember your password before expanding.

While this is one of the most common formats you'll come across, it's a shame that the program doesn't let you expand other popular formats like Stuffit Expander does.

Users have also been known to prefer unRarX, which effectively restores corrupted archives, something that RAR Expander doesn't seem to handle.

Download RAR Expander 0.8.5 Beta 3 in Softonic