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ZipCentral is a program designed to help you extract files from archives and to compress items to the ZIP or EXE format. It can be seamlessly used, even by less experienced users.

The interface of the tool is clearly outdated but simple to navigate through. You can create a new archive by specifying its location, name and extension, after which you can use the file browser to locate and select items for compression.

You can make the app save folder names, include subfolders, use disk spanning mode, and protect the files with a password. Options for the compression level range from 'none' to 'maximum'.

The file queue displays the name, packed and unpacked size, ratio, date of modification, along with the path for each item. Before creating the ZIP or EXE file, you may enable the tool to overwrite existing files or to create an autorun SFX. Plus, you can use command lines, if you are an experienced user.

You can move, copy, rename, delete archives or send them via email, use a search function for files, and test the integrity of a compressed item. But you can also convert files from and to the ZIP and EXE formats, as well as read or write the disk span.

From the 'Configuration' screen, you can pick the default open, extract and add folders, maximum size of a volume for disk spanning, and the open mode for the ZIP format (e.g. automatic codepage conversion), just to name a few. The list of the recent files may be cleared as well.

The simple-to-use tool runs on a low amount of CPU and system memory, has a fair response time and includes user's guide. We have not experienced any issues during our tests, since ZipCentral did not freeze, crash or pop up error dialogs. However, the interface needs a complete makeover. We must take into account the fact that ZipCentral has not been updated for a very long time.