POWER TO THE PEOPLE... info inside (eFront's Power Archiver)

Member Name: Del_Boy

Product:	eFront's Power Archiver
Date:	14/01/02 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Comprehenisve, Fully featured, Easy to use and install

Disadvantages: None really, does it's job perfectly

I'm sure if you regularly download programs from the Internet you will be familiar with Zip compression technology. This is a method of compressing a file so that it becomes smaller and thus quicker to download. Once complete you simply double click the file and providing you have an unzip utility such as WinZip then it will extract the file for you, at it's normal usable size.

Sometimes however you may download a file that WinZip seems unable to open, if that's the case then have you ever considered using a different Unzip utility?

Of course it is true to say that maybe you don't experience much hassle when unzipping files, if this is the case then Power Archiver won't really affect you either way. If you are one of those people who have copies of WinZip, Winrar and Winace all contained on your computer then this is the utility to use to replace all 3 of them.

Basic function
~~~~~~~~~~~

The basic function I hope is abundantly clear from reading my introduction, this program unzips, or to use the correct term decompresses a variety of different file types of formats.

File formats it supports
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ZIP, CAB, RAR, LZH+ (.LHA), ACE, ARJ, JAR, ARC, ZOO, BH, TAR, GZIP +. TGZ, BZIP2 (+. TBZ2 +TBZ), UUE, and finally XXE

What are all these files and formats? Well that would take more than this opinion to explain them all. They are all compressed formats; the predominant ones used are ZIP, CAB (Cabinet files; Windows uses these to store backups of system files), RAR and ACE. Most of the others you won't ever come across but, this utility will be there for you just in case.

Features of Power Archiver
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Power Archiver enables you to not only decompress files, but you can also create your own compressed archives in one of many formats; this is useful for many reasons.

Tip
~There is a vast help file contained w
ithin Power Archiver which will help you out with any problems you may have, or if you need explanations about one of its many features~

You can choose exactly how the power archiver interface should look, right down to adding new skins for it. This looks really good, and is a nice though unnecessary touch.

Virus scanning files is also a feature of Power Archiver. If you have an External Virus checker to enable virus scanning of Zips etc simply select the program path to your Virus checker from with Power Archives interface; it will then use this whenever it uncompresses a file.

Ability to create Spanned sets of disks with easy to use interface. If you have a program of any format and you wish to save it, however it's over 1.44 megs in size (which is standard Floppy Disk size) and you don't have a CD-Writer all is not lost. Simply use Power Archiver to split the file up into several pieces that can then be put onto media such as Floppy Disks. However whenever possible I would avoid using this for -very large files- for obvious reasons of using copious amounts of floppies. Also if just one Floppy gets corrupt (which is likely) then the whole spanned set will become useless without some serious file recovery software.

You can create self extracting .exe files, this is useful if you need to send a file to someone who hasn't got an unzip utility on there computer. This simply needs a double click and it will uncompress itself. Files such as this are generally a little larger than standard Zip files due to the technology it needs to incorporate to uncompress itself.

You can if needs be, change the compression from one format to another. This has limited usage though is useful for example turning an *Ace file which WinZip can't open into a *Zip file which it can. This would be useful in the situation of having to send a file to a user who had WinZip installed but not WinAce or of course Power Arc
hiver.

There are many other features, which you can use in this software from creating custom file archives to testing the archives and in some cases repairing damaged archives.

Installation
~~~~~~~~

Installation of this software was smooth and went without a single hitch. I have installed this on both Windows 98 and Windows XP both without problems as stated.

Where to get this program
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.powerarchiver.com Also you can obtain this from many Shareware sites, such as http://www.tucows.com, http://www.download.com and many other sites such as those stated.

Updates
~~~~~~

Updates to add even more functionality to this great program appear ever month or so, you don't have to download these but often they add something good to the program.

Limitations of shareware package
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are no limitations, and the program will continue to function after the trial period without any problems. If you wish to show your support for the software you can register it for a cost of $19.95 via the registration screen in software.

I do believe that $19.95 is a little expensive for most users and would think that a voluntary donation scheme would help them to gain more money for the wonderful work they have done with Power Archiver.

Full support is available from the power archiver website even if you haven't registered the software, so full marks for that also.

System Requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
· Microsoft Windows® 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP or higher
· >= Pentium 150 MHz or faster processor (recommended: Pentium 250 MHz)
· >= 12MB or more RAM (recommended: 32MB)
· A hard disk with at least 10MB free space (recommended: 50MB)
· A Microsoft or 100% compatible mouse (recommended)
· Microsoft HTML Help Update, Rich Edit Update v3.0 - available on the Power Archiv
er Web site
No external programs are required to add or extract files to or from an archive.

Summary
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If as I said at the start of the opinion are needing of an excellent all round utility for making and uncompressing a very wide variety of files, then look no further. In my opinion this beats all comers, this is show by the wide variety of 5 Star awards ***** it has accumulated from many Internet utilities sites. The majority of these awards were user rated also, so that speaks volumes in itself.

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