Simplyzip

Simplyzip is a freeware compression tool that works with most popular archive formats on the market and provides advanced encrypting abilities.

While the interface can very well be considered a mess, Simplyzip boasts multiple useful features beside the main compression tools, including dedicated utilities for repairing ACE and ZIP archives, backup files to disk, span ZIP and read span ZIP, set a password and many more.

Simplyzip can open the most popular formats out there, such as ZIP, CZIP, ACE, CAB, RAR, TAR, GZIP, LZH, BZ2, SQX, RS, UUE, XXE, BASE64, UCL, ARJ, ZLIB, ALIB, RPM, DEB and 7-ZIP.

It can create archives in the following formats: 7z, ZIP, CZIP, Cab, LHA, TAR, TAR GZ TAR BZ2, ACE (optionale DLL), Deepfreezer, SQX, UCL, RS, ZIP-SFX/LHA-SFX, RAR-SFX, UUE/XXE, ZLIB and Base64.

With multiple encryption methods at your disposal, Simplyzip has no dedicated configuration screen, so you should be ready to use it in a few seconds after launch.

Unfortunately however, while it works okay on Windows XP, Simplyzip is terribly slow on Windows 7 and it takes several seconds to load all menus available in the main window. Plus, it seems to seriously affect computer performance while doing that, despite the fact that the file compression process goes flawlessly.

Overall, Simplyzip is a decent file compression tool but the lack of the advanced features we're seeing in the similar apps available nowadays is a major setback. There's not even a help file in case beginners need assistance, so it's better to stick to the top products in this particular software category.