Swiss Army Knife of compression tools
If you work on multiple operating systems like me you would have run into a situation where you might need to open a Linux/Unix compressed file on Windows machine. The default zip handler that is built into Windows XP/Vista does not support TAR or GZ formats and the most popular Windows compression utility WinZip does not support it either.
7-Zip is a nifty utility from 7-Zip.org that supports packing and unpacking of ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR files.
If you are working on RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS then with the current version you can only unpack these files. In addition to these popular compression formats 7-Zip also has its own 7z format which has a very high compression ratio. Other cool features include Integration with Windows Shell, Powerful File Manager and Localizations for 69 languages
7-Zip works in Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista and is free for home and commercial use. Unofficial Linux ports are also available for download.
