file extension GZ

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for "BOMArchiveHelper.app", the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. I personally find it useful for opening Japanese archives, but it should handle many other languages just as well.

It is very simple to use and install - simply copy it into your Applications folder or whereever you prefer, and then set archive filetypes to open using it. This can either be done the usual way, or by double-clicking the icon to show The Unarchiver's preferences.

Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats

IZArc

IZArc is the ultimate freeware archive utility supporting many archive formats.
IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more.
IZArc has also build-in multilanguage support.

Key features:

• Create an archive
• Add files to an existing archive
• Delete files from an existing archive
• Extract files from an existing archive
• Test an archive file
• Convert archive
• Convert CD Images
• Repair broken archive
• Searching for any files in many archives
• Favorite Folders
• Obtaining a detailed list of files and information like compression rate, path, or size from an archive file
• Supports both long and short 8.3 filenames
• Disk spanning from and to multiple diskettes or other removable media
• Implementing the possibility to sort the list items by name size, date and etc.
• Full Drag & Drop support
• CD/DVD Images support (ISO, BIN, MDF, NRG, IMG, C2D, PDI, CDI)
• Integrating in Windows Explorer context menu
• Automatic installation of most software distributed in archive files
• Add/View comments in an archive
• By double-clicking onto a file in the file list, it's opened with the program associated to this file type
• CheckOut feature
• Create a self-extracting archive
• E-mail an archive
• Checking for new updates
• Build-in multilanguage support
• Virus Scan feature
• UU/XX/MIME Encode/Decode
• Create Multi-Volume Set
• Merge Multi-Volume Set
• UnSFX (Convert self-extracting (SFX) .EXE files to standard archives)
• Encrypt files using Rijandael - AES (256-bits) encryption
• Zip encryption (WinZip 9 compatible)
• BZip compression for ZIP archives
• Decrypt (.ize) files

The main features of 7-Zip

• 7-Zip is open source software. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. You can use 7-Zip on any computer, including a computer in a commercial organization. You don't need to register or pay for 7-Zip. But you can make a donation to support further development of 7-Zip.
• High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
• Supported formats:
  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
  • Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for more than 60 languages

WinZip description:

WinZip includes major usability enhancements, improved compression technology and, is now available in a Standard and a Pro version. Both the Standard and Pro versions are made available in one distribution file. Functionality is determined by either a Standard or Pro registration code.
Both the Standard and Pro versions offer new, state-of-the-art compression technology allowing you to make even smaller Zip files, and a new Explorer-style view of your Zip file contents, making them easier to navigate, modify, and extract.

Other enhancements include:

• the ability to create split (multi-volume) Zip files during compression, automatic update checking and many more.
• If you've ever used WinZip to backup data sets, archive important documents, or distribute information to others on a regular basis, you'll appreciate the WinZip Job Wizard, included in WinZip Pro. The WinZip Job Wizard provides powerful productivity and automation features that help to simplify your repetitive compression tasks.
• Explorer-style view
• Both versions of WinZip feature a new Explorer-style view of your Zip files, making it much easier to work with complex, multi-folder archives.
  

The Explorer-style view allows you to:

• See the structure of your Zip file at a glance, using a tree-structured view of the folders in your Zip file. The tree view lets you quickly drill down to see only the items in folders that you want to work with. This view appears in the left pane of the WinZip Classic window, and is easily switched on or off according to your preference.
• Display only the files and subfolders in the currently selected folder. These items appear in the separate right pane and can be displayed as tiles, icons, a simple list, or a detailed list.
• Create new folders in your Zip file.
• Add files directly to new or existing folders in your Zip file using drag and drop.
• Quickly extract individual folders and their subfolders by dragging and dropping them to Windows Explorer.
• Easily delete folders and their subfolders from your Zip files.

Improved Compression

WinZip supports two new compression methods within the Zip file format, PPMd and bzip2. These compression methods can provide greater compression and may significantly reduce the size of your Zip files, saving both data transmission time and valuable disk space.
Note: extracting files compressed with PPMd or bzip2 requires a compatible Zip file utility. Currently WinZip 9.0 and 10.0 will process Zip files compressed using the bzip2 method. WinZip is required for PPMd-compressed files.
Note: we have published the full specification of PPMd compression support in Zip files, to allow authors of other Zip file utilities to adopt the PPMd compression format as well.

Automation (WinZip Pro only)

WinZip Pro features the 'WinZip Job Wizard', a completely new and powerful productivity and automation tool. The WinZip Job Wizard allows you to create Zip "jobs" that identify the "what, where, when, and how" of virtually any repetitive zipping task. Once you've created a job, you can run it as easily as double-clicking an icon on your desktop, or schedule it to run automatically.
You can use WinZip jobs for periodic reporting, off-site storage, daily data backups, and anything else that you do repetitively.

WinZip jobs are extremely powerful yet incredibly easy to create and use:

• The new Job Wizard guides you through the process of creating and modifying the WinZip job files by helping you to identify what files and folders you want to compress, where you want to place the Zip file, and how you want the compression performed.
• You can schedule WinZip jobs to run unattended at YOUR convenience, daily, weekly, or monthly. Alternatively, you can run a WinZip job any time you want, directly from Windows Explorer, from the WinZip Classic menus, or from the WinZip Wizard.
• You can automatically send the Zip files created by your jobs to remote FTP sites (great for off-site storage or transmitting compressed data to a central location).
• WinZip jobs even let you specify "Generic folder names" which allow a single job specification to be used by multiple users to create Zip files that are user- and/or machine-specific. For example, a single job file that specifies the generic folder, , always refers to the current user's personal documents folder, no matter where it is located or what it is named. Generic folder names can be used to specify both the location of files to compress and the location of the resultant Zip file.
• WinZip jobs support encryption of your zipped data using either standard Zip 2.0 encryption or WinZip's advanced AES encryption, and can be configured to use a supplied password automatically or to prompt you for a password when the job runs.
• WinZip jobs allow you to create multi-volume Zip files of user-definable sizes for easy storage on removable media.
• Additional optional time and date information can be appended to Zip file names and their locations to allow you to create a different Zip file each time the job is run, so today's Zip file won't overwrite yesterday's.
• WinZip can create an optional log file to allow for silent operation and to provide you with the detailed results of your job each time it is run.

In addition to jobs that you create, WinZip includes several pre-defined job files for compressing the contents of your most common folders and files, such as My Documents, Windows Desktop, your Favorites folder, even your Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail files.

Zip to CD or DVD (WinZip Pro on Windows XP only)

WinZip Pro now allows you to create Zip files directly on CD or DVD, making it unnecessary to zip first to your hard disk and then transfer the Zip files to CD or DVD. Large Zip files will automatically span multiple CDs or DVDs, if necessary. Supported disc formats include: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R.

WinZip Quick File Selection IconQuick file selection

Do you need to see all of the DOC files in your Zip file, or all of the spreadsheets with names that begin with "July"? WinZip makes easy work of locating one or more files in a Zip file with many members. Just use the new 'Select files' feature to specify a name or wildcard pattern and all matching files will be selected and moved to the top of the file list, ready for your next instruction.

Attachment management support

WinZip supports Windows XP SP2's Attachment Manager by working with Windows to block the extraction and execution of dangerous file types from Zip files you download with Internet Explorer or receive as Outlook Express e-mail attachments. This service helps you protect your computer by warning you of files that might be dangerous to open.

More efficient Zip file splitting

WinZip can easily split your large Zip files as they are created. In one simple step you can zip large amounts of data and split it into smaller pieces for easy storage on removable media or for sending by e-mail.

Automatic update checking

WinZip can automatically check to see if a new version of the program is available. Periodic update checking runs on a schedule of your choosing, or you can check manually whenever you like. When an update is available, WinZip displays a brief description of the update and offers to open an Internet browser window to the WinZip web site.