If each time a program is released with a name that includes "ZIP", one dollar would be given away for charity, probably Somalia could be fed for a couple of weeks with the funds raised this way. When I'll have enough money, I may involve into some charitable actions myself, but until then, let's check a new archiver that I have found.

The name of the compression tool I have here is ALZip and its latest version is 6.32. What I have here is a shareware version without any limitations, but if you like the program, it would be nice to register it, especially since its price is only 20$. Installing ALZip was a piece of cake - the setup program didn't ask me any stupid questions and its size is 3.1MB, which shouldn't be too much considering the download speeds available all over the world these days...and things are getting faster and faster each day, but let's leave this subject and move to the interface and features instead, shall we?

All the interfaces that made me laugh so far were bad, really bad or nothing more than absolute crap, but this time it's something different. ALZip has a nice interface, well organized and with excellent toolbar graphics. Just place your mouse pointer above each one of them and you'll understand why this interface made me laugh. OK, so we have a good interface that's also funny at the same time, which is good, but it's time to check the features now.

As usual, first thing to know about an archiver is how many file types are supported and name the most important ones. ALZip supports over thirty file formats, the most important ones being ZIP, of course, 7Z, RAR, ISO, ACE, ARJ, PAK or LHA, but the list doesn't end here, as I said.

When opening an archive, scanning for viruses would be a good idea, and this program can use an external virus scanner and even pass some parameters to it. Even more, you can choose the default program for opening the files from your archives.

Unfortunately, there are no wizards to help you inside this program, but I guarantee that using it is as easy as one-two-three.

When you need, you can send the current archive through e-mail using the default email client. After clicking the E-mail to command from the File menu, the mail client opens with the new message window having the current archive already attached to the empty message.

Additional features like archive repairing, testing or installing archived programs are also available, and I only wish there would have been more, such as Favorites or some wizards...but this is life, you win some, you lose some. These being said, let's move on to the conclusions!

The Good

ALZip is easy to use, fast, reliable and good looking. The features it offers are average, but its file support and unlimited shareware version make up for that.

The Bad

In the future, I would like to be able to open more archives at once and strong encryption features. Some skins with more funny icons would also be an excellent addition! ;)

The Truth

I don't know what to say about this program, because despite its drawbacks, I really enjoyed it. Maybe that ALZip is not "the archiver", but it can surely help you with your daily archiving tasks and, most important of all, it can make you smile!

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: