WinZip is one of those ubiquitous compression programs that nearly everybody has on their computer, although there are many other rival products available.

Compressing files that are destined to be distributed over the Internet greatly reduces the time taken to download them. Also, storing compressed files saves on hard disk space. WinZip, as the name implies, primarily relies around ZIP technology, which is now supported within both Windows and Mac OS as their default choice of compression.

The download is the beta version of the forthcoming WinZip 11. The new version contains a number of new features such as the facility to choose the best possible compression, automatically. The software will determine, based on the files you are trying to archive, the correct choice of compression.

It also supports the RAR format (extract only), whilst the Professional (yes, there really is a professional version) supports additional features such as the automatic distribution of compression reports.