CoffeeZip

When it comes to compressing or decompressing files, there are a few names that cross any user's mind. Nevertheless, this category also comprises smaller applications such as CoffeeZip that bundle a rich feature set, offering users viable alternatives dedicated to the same purpose.

While simple in its essence, CoffeeZip stands out of the crowd through the wide range of supported archive formats and the ease that it handles every task with. Among the input file types you can find widely-used formats such as ZIP, 7z, RAR, CAB, TAR, ISO, as well as less popular ones, including TGZ, WIM,, ARJ, ALZ,, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, RPM, UDF, MSI and the list does not stop here.

The main interface is split into two separate panes, in order to allow easy fast management and browsing. CoffeeZip displays the content of a container before proceeding to the extraction process. However, it does not allow you to interact with the content in any way (you cannot copy, paste files directly from the archive) unless you extract it.

Alternatively, the application can be used for creating new archives, but the array of file formats is narrowed down to four options, namely ZIP, 7z, TAR and WIM. This procedure does not require a lot of configuration to be set up, but you have the possibility to change the compression level (which directly influences the process speed), customize the output name and location. In order to protect the compressed data, a password can be assigned to the generated archive.

You can split up the input into several data bunches of various sizes, which saves you the trouble of having to resize them when transferring the archives on storage mediums, such as floppy disks (although this method is no longer used for quite some time), CDs or DVDs.

On an ending note, it is safe to say that CoffeeZip is just as powerful as more popular archiving tools. It impresses through the range of supported formats and the shell integration enables you to conveniently access it from the context menu.