what do i need to open .rar files?

anyone know? help is appreciated.

Winrar?

yep, you can download winrar from download.com or some site similar to that....

thx, much appreciated.

don't use Winrar as it's shareware, you'd better use Izarc, which is freeware and supports a lot of formats (including zip)

It's better free than cracked

rarlabs.com

You can still use WinRAR for as long as you want without buying it, and it also supports zip files and others.

You can still use WinRAR for as long as you want without buying it, and it also supports zip files and others.

Yup, and the evaluation pop ups aren't that annoying at all.

*heart*

wasnt it winzip before???

wasnt it winzip before???

i think no, still there is winrar and winzip, two different programs

Winrar--- For .Rar files/.Zip files
Winzip--- For .Zip files

7Zip can open pretty much anything... and it has insane compression rates.

7Zip can open pretty much anything... and it has insane compression rates.

Can you give me an example?

And not all people have it.

Compression ratio

Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests. We compared 7-Zip with some of the leading archivers: WinRAR 3.10, WinAce 2.3, CABARC 1.0, PKZIP 2.50.

FILE SET: The GIMP 1.2.4 for Windows after full installation (127 subfolders, 1304 files totaling 27,128,826 bytes). The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can be downloaded from www.gimp.org.

Archiver Compressed size Ratio
7-Zip (7z format) 5445402 100%
WinRAR 3.10 6004155 110%
WinAce 2.3 6242424 115%
CABARC 1.0 6455327 119%
7-Zip (zip format) 9461621 174%
PKZIP 2.50 9842800 181%

Usually 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format. And 7-Zip compresses to zip format 2-10% better than other zip compatible programs.

I've had nothing but excellent results with it

So, instead of .zip, it's .7z for best compression results? Wouldn't that require a .7z format compatibility on another person's machine if you were to transfer the file?

Yeah, just like any compression type, the other person needs a program to open it. Of course, it can always create .exe versions as well, with a bit less compression.