Here is finally the brand new 2000 edition of the Powhertz archiver test. Regardless of the tops of the most important games and of the most important programs of the '90s, the first archiver test, dating of August 98, was the first ever Powhertz computer file. I think it was a great start, but now Powhertz goes forward: 27 archivers compared in 7 categories instead of 10 archivers in 6 categories with an additional stat: the extract time. The test took up about 15 hours total, so I really hope the results to interest you!

I guess most of you only know PKZip for DOS, WinZip and WinRAR. It's maybe time to go further. The test does not pretend or neither aim at testing all of the available archivers for DOS/Windows, but it certainly represents nearly 20% of them, the most importants of course. Note however the voluntary exclusion of the command-line IMP (replaced in this test by WinIMP, from the same authors), ACE Archiver (replaced in this test by WinACE, from the same authors), BIX (the fast but less efficient variant of UFA and 777, those 3 archivers being from the same authors) and of the traditionnal and legendary PKZip 2.04 whose creators, PKWare, are already well-represented in this test with PKZip 2.50 in command line and PKZip 2.70 for Windows 32 bits. Finally note that NetZip Classic 7.5.1.85 was supposed to be part of the test but just didn't want to install on my Windows 95 system (I was always getting an error near the end of the installation!) and that I just forgot ZipMagic, sorry.

Is, in 2000, AIP-NL UltraCompressor II still offering the highest compression ratio? Will IMP still be the most efficient archiver overall? Will the jump to version 2.55e help LHA not to end up last this time? Answer to all of these questions and much much more on the results page.