14 DAY TRIAL // Last week we received a review request through e-mail, and this fit perfectly into my schedule, since I had no idea about any new archiver to review these days. Now, let's find out more about this target that was revealed to me...
The name of the program is Pea-Peach, but it is composed of two components. The first one is the command line archiver called PEA, and its frontend is called Peach. I won't get into details about each of these two, but concentrate my fire on the Pea-Peach couple.
Pea-Peach's current version is 0.11 and the installation package has 1.9MB in size, being very easy to set up. This pack comes as a completely free solution to your archiving needs, released under the terms of the LGPL license, and next, we will get to know better its interface and the features hidden inside.
This fruit's interface looks original enough for me, but the bad part is that it seems a bit outdated, but that depends on what you're expecting from it. What I see is a main window without toolbar and most interface buttons are just text links here, but if we look on the bright side, we can notice that the program's window transparency is adjustable and the color scheme can be changed as we like. Even better, the color themes can be saved as TXT files for later use and for sharing with other users of this program (each color theme file includes information about the author and license).
As usual, the first things to check about an archiver are the supported file types for opening and saving. Unfortunately, the only format supported is the PEA archive type, but the good part about this is that you get some interesting things with it.
This program's native archive format that I just told you about uses deflate based compression, similar in speed and compression ratio to the ZIP, but this is one of its strong points. After all, there are a lot of free archivers supporting the ZIP format and even additional ones, so why would you choose PEA?
Security and integrity checking are essentials for people and companies looking reliability and security for their archives. Pea-Peach offers advanced and flexible integrity and security check options, including external key files for your encrypted archives. The encryption schemes supported are 128 bit AES classical and EAX mode and 256 bit AES used in EAX mode.
When creating a new archive, you can choose from the available volume sizes that start with 1.44 floppy disk and finish with 4.7GB DVD, but custom sizes can also be defined. There are four compression levels available - better, default, fast and faster(none), and a lot of security settings that you'll have to discover for yourselves.
Apart from packing and unpacking, you can also split and join existing archives, but the file type support is also limited to the native file type. These being said, let's see the conclusions!
The Good
Pea-Peach is easy to use, fast, reliable and looks good. The interface color themes can be saved for further use just like skins, the window transparency level can be changed, the documentation is very good, but the best part is that you can use the program for free.
The Bad
The main drawback of this program is its extremely limited file support. If the future will bring support for popular archive types, I am sure that Pea-Peach will gain a lot of supporters.
The Truth
Pea-Peach is one of those tools for people having only one goal in mind. While UHARC was a long time the leader of the compression level race, but didn't become popular because of its speed and command line interface (in the meantime, some frontends appeared, but the program is still painfully slow), the target I had here today seems a good candidate for the "secure archiving" crown. If you want ultimate security and a little extra, take your time and try the Pea-Peach duo!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
