WinRAR 3.51

Have you ever scoured the internet for a file you need only to find it an RAR archive? There have been so many times when we have encountered RAR that we figured it was about time we put it through its paces to see if it's really worth downloading.

WinRAR has a very straight forward interface which is extremely easy to use. Files can be added with the click of a button or with drag and drop capabilities, where the user can simply move files into the open archive. Users of WinRAR can also choose to create WinZip files as well, making RAR far more flexible.

The most popular compression program on the internet is easily Winzip (.zip files) so in our tests we have compared the compression times and rates for WinZip and WinRAR. WinRAR offers tight compression making huge files manageable in minutes but we found that WinZip did it faster. We tried two file sizes and while the compression speeds were vastly different, the level of compression was fairly similar, if not slightly in favour of WinRAR.

We compressed a 95MB file with WinRAR and in 1min 20sec the program produced a 90MB file. WinZip produced a 90.1MB file in only 25 seconds. We next tried a 1GB source file and both programs produced a 980MB file. However, while WinRAR took 18min 23sec to do the job, again WinZip proved to be superior by creating the file in only 7min 45sec. These are vastly different speeds, making WinRAR woefully below par and a questionable choice in compression software.

WinRAR can be downloaded via an evaluation trial or purchased from the WinRAR website but in all honesty, based on our tests, we believe you would be much better served by a copy of WinZip