Many of us who download excessively often encounter the compressed file, commonly in .ZIP format. For users of the Windows NT range of OS, there's an in-built unzipping tool to extract compressed files.

However, this utility has many limitations on the type of compression formats it supports. Enter 7-Zip, a freeware unzipping utility that supports almost all compression formats including UNIX tarball formats as well!

I have been using 7-Zip for more than 2 years now. Apart from letting you unzip, it also offers compression in various formats and even allows you to set compression ratios, so that you can get the best and smallest compressions.

7-Zip also allows creation of encrypted password-protected vaults and self-extracting executables. I could not do without 7-Zip in my daily downloading life