Review: Hamster Free Zip Archiver 2.0 compresses files in a snap

Hamster Free Zip Archiver comes across as cute and cuddly, thanks to its nicely designed user interface and a bouncy GIF animation. And once you start using it, you can almost hear a whirring hamster wheel. It's fast.

The Hamster website claims that it takes advantage of multi-core computing to go faster. That claim held up when I tested Hamster on a new Windows 8 PC Quad-Core. The company claims it's faster than its competitors on older machines, too.

Thanks to its drag and drop interface, it's easy to use, too. To create a compressed file, you simply drag and drop the files you want to include onto HFZA main screen. Hamster tells you the folder's current size and asks you to choose between the ZIP and 7Z formats. Choose your file format (ZIP is faster, as it was when using 7-Zip), whether or not you want to split the file up, and whether or not you want to lock the file. You then press "compress," and Hamster does its job.

Hamster's actual compression results were less impressive: It reduced my folder to only 26MB, so there is no extra advantage, file size-wise. But, like PeaZip, Hamster offers the ability to split compressed files. To send an email, you can split the file in two as long as the recipient also has Hamster ready and waiting to put the file back together again.

You can add a password to lock the archive, but no actual encryption is promised.

Note: The Download button takes you to to the vendor's website, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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Hamster Free Zip Archiver 1.1.0.13

If you're not satisfied with the basic Zip archiving built into Windows, you'll want to give Hamster Free Zip Archiver a try. It offers far more capabilities than what you get with Windows, and unlike many other similar pieces of archiving software, does it for free.

Hamster Free Zip Archiver 1.1.0.13 handles the most popular compression formats, including Zip and 7z, and does so with exceptional ease. Creating an archive is as simple as dragging and dropping files and pressing a button. Opening an archive is even simpler: Just navigate to the archive and click the Open button. It creates archives in only the Zip and 7z formats, but handles unarchiving in the RAR format.

Even though Hamster Free Zip Archiver is simple to use, it has some nice customizability. It allows you to decide whether faster speed or smaller archive size (or a compromise between them) is your goal. You can choose among three compression levels, Minimum, Optimal, and Maximum. Minimum compresses the least, but the program creates the archive the fastest; Maximum compresses the most and creates an archive the slowest. Optimal, as its name implies, is just right for those who want to balance speed of creation with small size. Unless you need to compress extremely large files, you'll likely find that the optimal setting works fine; in my tests, it compressed a 34.6 MB file in only 15 seconds.

You can also split large archives into pieces, and also password-protect archives as well. This compression software doesn't have the have advanced features, such as e-mail integration, that you'll find in a paid product like WinZip. But if you don't need those features, and are looking for a free, simple, no-fuss way to handle archives, you'll want to download Hamster Free Zip Archiver.

Note that when you install Hamster Free Zip Archiver, it will make Bing your default search engine, make Bing your homepage, and install the Bing search toolbar in your browser, unless you choose to customize your installation and uncheck the options next to those.

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