It's been a while since anything came along that could possibly rival WinZIP or WinRAR in terms of speed and compression/decompression power but ZipItFree gives them a good run for their money. Apart from anything else, the best thing to start off with is by stating this is completely free - no annoying registrations or fees to pay. It's also now fully functional with Vista with an appropriate modern and stylish interface that gives you the feel that you're dealing with a quality piece of software. The key selling point of this program however is the way it compresses files using what the developers call the "Black Hole" method which provides very high compression ratios and ultra fast decompression. The other major selling point is what they call the ZipV2 encryption algorithm which they describe as "by far the most secure encryption for archiving (hundreds of times more secure than even the leading AES encryption)". How secure this format is is debatable but the fact is that it's certainly one of the less utilised compression ratios that should mean it's less liable to attack. Apart from the fact that it handles multiple formats with ease, what's also nice is that you can leave comments on your archives describing what the archive contains so you don't have to go to the hassle of unzipping it all. For a free, stylish and powerful alternative to WinZIP and WinRAR, ZipItFree is one of the most impressive efforts out there.