ZipUnzip

There was a time when space on a hard disk drive represented an issue and you had to know exactly how to manage free space. This is where compression utilities came in handy, by packing all files you needed in an archive and considerably reducing space taken. Since this is no longer an issue, archiving is nowadays used to prevent files from being infected by malicious apps. In this regard, ZipUnzip comes with the right tools to do what the name suggests.

Thanks to a clever design and implementation of features, the application can easily be stored on a USB Flash drive and used on the go. However, the application is built with the Java engine, so you need to make sure you have Java Runtime Environment installed on the machine you use it on.

The application isn't much to look at in terms of design, with a compact interface being home to all tools you need to compress files. Little effort is required on your behalf, so you only need to provide a source and destination, while hitting the “Compress” button takes care of the rest.

However, the application isn't all fun and games, leaving a lot more to be desired. First of all, you need to pack all target files in a folder, because the target is only one directory. Destination is easy to pick and can be any location on your computer.

It can take some time to process your files, but this only depends on the overall size. A big disappointment is the lack of a progress bar, so if you compress large files you don't exactly know when the task is done. One way to bypass this issue is to keep an eye on the service running in the task manager and judge by resource usage, which is a rather disturbing method.

The application is only capable of compressing files, with no implemented function of extraction, so you still need a similar app. Luckily, modern iterations of Windows can extract ZIP files so this isn't a major issue. Compression ratio also leaves more to be desired, with little difference between the original folder and the archive in terms of size.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that ZipUnzip only deserves the first half of its name, but just because it can compress files, not because it does so flawlessly. It leaves a lot more to be desired both in terms of design and functionality, so it's recommended you look for alternatives if you need to work with archives on a daily basis.