ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver designed for Microsoft Windows users, developed by Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software. It can handle a number of archive formats, including the powerful 7z compression format. It is presented in two editions: standard and suite. While the suite edition includes optional modules of the ZipGenius project (oriented to experts and power-users), the standard setup package simply includes the main ZipGenius application.

ZipGenius was firstly released as "Mr. Zip 98" to a strict group of users, then it has been renamed to "ZipGenius" in March 1998 and the first public release was made in April 1999. ZipGenius's newest version is v 6.0.3.1150 released on October 13, 2007. This release is a bugfix release that fixes the memory leaks and bugs that were very common in the previous release. It works with close to two-dozen file formats, can password-protect archives, and works directly with CD-R/RW drivers.

Features

ZipGenius features include: support for TWAIN devices (scanners and digital cameras), file extraction to CD/DVD burner (only under Windows XP), an FTP client (FTPGenius), ZGAlbum. ZGAlbum allows users to create slideshows with pictures, that can be loaded from a folder or imported through a TWAIN device.

ZipGenius also fully integrates with Windows Explorer shell. User interface and functions have been placed in multiple locations. Program functions can be accessed either from a menu of buttons on the main toolbar, or from a drop-down menu. They can be customized to suit user preferences. Additionally, ZipGenius will allow users to use the mouse right-click button as multiple functions have been replicated there.

ZipGenius 6 is a typical application for Windows and for Linux: RPM, TAR, TAR.GZ, TGZ, GZ, Z files are supported and users can move files from Linux to Windows and vice versa.

As regards data security, the archive history file is encrypted, the most recently used files list can be enabled (always or per-session) or disabled, and CryptoZip 2.1 gives encryption algorithms to lock user archives. Users can create self-locking/self-erasing archives and can choose to encrypt files with one of four algorithms (CZIP, Blowfish, Twofish, Rijndael AES). Also, CZIP files no longer depend on ZipGenius because users can create executable CZIP (.EXE) files which will allow the user to send encrypted archives to people who do not use ZipGenius.

ZipGenius is still under development: while v. 6.0.3.1150 will probably be the last of the "6" series, Matteo Riso - the main developer - is focusing on next release, whose codename is "Miky2007". The software will be still branded as "ZipGenius" but it is not clear if it will have a "7" or "2007" beside it. The only sure news is that ZipGenius will ship as "developed by WinInizio Software Team", marking the fact that ZipGenius is now a product of WinInizio.it, a wide IT community board, where Matteo Riso is an admin.

File formats

ZipGenius is able to handle the open source UPX executable compressor, which is used to compress ZipGenius main executable. If UPX.exe is in ZipGenius program folder, users will get an extra compression level while creating new ZIP archives: Brutal+UPX. Many executable files (EXE, DLL, OCX) are distributed as they are after code compilation, so they may have a larger size than necessary.

ZipGenius supports the 7-Zip compression format. The 7-Zip compression format, conceived by Igor Pavlov (http://www.7-zip.org), can compress files more than standard ZIP or RAR compression formats, and it is recommended for compressing multimedia files, such as videos and MP3s.

ZipGenius supports OpenOffice.org/StarOffice documents. OpenOffice.org applications produce their own files in a special format: they are .ZIP archives with a custom file extension containing some XML files, which OpenOffice.org programs merge together to rebuild the original documents. ZipGenius complies with this feature, and allows users to manage those files as if they were common ZIP files. In addition, users can optimize them: OpenOffice.org does not use the maximum compression level available for .ZIP format, but ZipGenius does. When users optimize an OpenOffice.org document with ZipGenius, the gain is from 5 to 10 KB of size reduction (depending by the content of the OpenOffice.org file) because ZipGenius will recompress the document with the "Brutal" compression level.