Alpha ZIP

Alpha ZIP is a simple-to-use software solution that allows you to quickly create archives and extract files from compressed items. It supports plenty of formats for the input, such as ZIP, CAB, TAR and 7Z.

The tool is wrapped in a clean and intuitive interface, oriented towards first-time users. When creating a new archive, you can get started by establishing its name, location and extension.

After the archive is created, you can open it and add as many files and folders as you want from your computer, by using standard file managers, like Windows Explorer.

From the 'Settings' area, you can integrate Alpha ZIP into the system shell, make it prompt for an action when an archive contains 'Readme' plain text documents or setup files, as well as make file associations.

The straightforward program runs on a low amount of CPU and system memory, is pretty responsive to commands, quickly compresses and decompresses files, and includes a help file. We have not come across any issues during our tests; Alpha ZIP did not freeze, crash or pop up error dialogs.

On the downside, Alpha ZIP does not come with any advanced settings that you can configure. For example, you cannot select the compression method, encrypt the archives by assigning a password to them, verify the integrity of archives, and so on. We would have liked to see support for some important file types, such as RAR.

Alpha ZIP is a simplistic compression tool which is mainly designed for inexperienced users. We must take into consideration the fact that the app has not been updated for a long time.