The beta release of version 9 is best described as a release version in beta clothing. Over the course of 4 days of constant pestering, we never experienced a crash, error message or other problem. And in keeping with our motto of "real reviews by real users" we weren't focused on pure testing so much as backing up large amounts of data to Jaz cartridges and CD-R. WinZip appeared to work flawlessly and our backups were created without any corrupt file entries or unreadable archives.
Security first. WinZip 9.0 now fully supports 128 and 256-bit key AES encryption, which provide much greater cryptographic security than the traditional Zip 2.0 encryption method used in earlier versions of WinZip. Thank whatever heathen idols you pray to, because password protection and file encryption in previous version of WinZip were somewhat less than stellar. For the pure techies out there, WinZip 9.0's advanced encryption (FIPS-197 certified) uses the Rijndael cryptographic algorithm which, in 2001, was specified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in U.S. Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Publication 197 as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Deutsche Institut fur Normung (DIN) also approves this stuff so the security rating is very high indeed. The technology fight over security standards has been tough lately too. After a three-year competition, the AES was announced by NIST as an approved encryption technique for use by the U.S. government, private businesses, and individuals. When properly implemented as a key component of an overall security protocol, the AES permits a very high degree of cryptographic security, but is still fast and efficient in operation. The implementation in WinZip 9 is transparent, with no discernable effect on compression or decompression speeds.
Compression ratios have improved slightly. We noticed that quite a few text and graphic files were slimmer by a few kilobytes. The overall improvement isn't huge, but it still makes a difference when it comes to fitting just that one extra file on a backup CD-R.
Capacity has improved dramatically. WinZip used to top out at around 65,000 files and 4 gigabytes per archive. Because WinZip 9 now uses a 64-bit extended file format, those 'restrictions' are effectively eliminated. Why should you care about these enormous file counts and sizes? Well for one thing, anyone who is backing up large file collections (fonts, music, images, etc.) can now rely on WinZip as a very fast and accurate solution. Anyone who has to backup collections of multi-gigabyte video files can also now use WinZip. Considering the fact that your average 25 minute digital video capture is well over 2 gigabytes in size, the enormous capacity in WinZip 9 is a welcome change. It is now easy to compress a 6 gigabyte video so it can fit on a single 4.7GB DVD-R. That means less file splitting (with all its inherent problems). Back up those precious business, vacation and family videos now.
Source : www.kickstartnews.com
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