Product Reviews

No matter how large your hard disk, you never seem to have enough free space. One way to increase available space is to compress files into ZIP archives. ZIP files are also the preferred format if you want to send large amounts of files over the Internet; they can reduce your transfer time, thereby saving you time and money.

TurboZIP lets you create and manage compressed file archives in industry-standard ZIP format files. It handles most common file formats, including Microsoft Windows CAB files and email file formats, such as UUencode, MIME and BinHex.

On installation, as well as adding icons to the Windows 95 Start menu, TurboZIP will integrate into the Explorer File menu.

The main working area has an Explorer look and feel about it, and using it shouldn't pose problems for most people. There's a slim manual on-line, although its language could be confusing for new users. Add and Extract Wizards are included to help less experienced users, although I expect that once they know the ropes most will prefer to work directly with the main interface.

Once files have been ZIPed, TurboZIP

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allows you to search, view, print and launch files from within the archives without having to unzip them first. There are built-in proprietary viewers for many file formats, including ActiveX previewing of Office 97 documents, MPEG and animated GIF moving image formats. Archives can be searched for specific files, as well as for their contents. Exact and fuzzy best match criteria can also be set up.

Archives can be stored on hard disk or on removable media. Where the file size is too large to fit on a single disk, TurboZIP prompts for additional disks until the complete archive is saved. You can create self-extracting EXE files and specify that a file, contained in the archive, will run automatically following extraction.

Two useful features are the ZIP Set and Auto Scan options. You can instruct TurboZIP to search your system, network and removable media for archived and email files. These can then be organised into ZIP Sets, allowing you to organise archives and email files as you would normal files. You can also group them together for easy access. The ZIP Sets contain pointers to the files, which remain in their original locations.

In ZIP Sets, you can include files held on floppies, Iomega ZIP disks, CD-ROMs and so on. Usually, the only way to see what's on removable media is to insert it in the drive. With TurboZIP, you can list the files in an archive or email file even when the removable media isn't in the drive. You can set up an Auto Backup feature that will save a named set of files to an archive.

I haven't had it long, but TurboZIP has already become an essential tool on my desktop, making my system easier to manage and releasing valuable disk space.