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WinRAR is one of the programs that I discovered a long, long time ago, back when the Internet was young. How did I find it? I think I was looking for a program to open a zip file for a web site template. I remember, back then, it would fit onto a floppy disk and was easy to use. Over the years, new programs came along, but I've stuck with using WinRAR. It's versatile.

When I first started using WinRAR, the only other viable option for opening archives was using DOS zip because Windows didn't have the capability built into it. Yes, I'm talking about the days before even Windows 95. I remember using WinRAR in the days of Windows 3.11. There were other archiving software out there, but none of them were versatile enough to open the things that I wanted to open.

I had a friend who sent me a copy of some source code in a Unix gzip file and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I didn't think WinRAR would be any use, since it was a Windows program. Being new to computers, I was naive and didn't realize that WinRAR would open files created on Unix. Heck, I barely knew how to use Windows. I was used to DOS, since that's what was on my computer at home. Ah, the days of DOS and BASIC.

You can open so many different archive types with WinRAR. You can open your standard zips, but you can also open Linux/Unix archives, like gzip and tar files. It's still quite small, but the flexibility is beyond measure. I've found myself using other people's computers and wishing they had WinRAR . One of my basic staple programs.

Every time I've gotten a new computer, WinRAR is one of the first things that gets installed. When someone asks me for a recommendation for an archive program, it's the first one that comes to mind. I've brought many a new user to WinRAR and most of them tell me that they can never go back to using WinZip.

It's quick and easy to learn, it's flexible and it has opened everything that I've ever thrown at it. So why would I use anything but WinRAR? WinRAR has done everything I've ever needed it to do for over 10 years now. Just try to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

Learn more about this author, Margaret Kerr.
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