If you're reading Tom's Hardware, you're no doubt familiar with WinZip. The popular file compressing software has been a staple application for PC users for years and it still is, with over a billion downloads and 100 million active users. WinZip celebrated its best year ever in 2011, and 2012 brought WinZip for iOS and Android, as well as WinZip Mac 2. WinZip for Windows 8 will launch later on this year, and Corel is this week celebrating the launch of WinZip 17.
Featuring integration with the likes of Dropbox, Google Drive, and Sky Drive, WinZip 17 features 128- or 256-bit AES encryption along with support for OpenCL acceleration on AMD's Fusion, Trinity, and Radeon graphics, as well as Nvidia's GeForce graphics, and Intel's Ivy Bridge. It also allows you to prepare files as you share them (convert to PDF, resize images, add watermarks), send up to 2 GB via email (thanks to ZipSend, a delivery service designed to bypass limits on attachment sizes), securely share through the cloud, or share files on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
On a more personal note, our own Chris Angelini tells me that WinZip 17 will be making its debut in the Tom's Hardware testing suite next week. Chris highlighted the importance of support for OpenCL acceleration in particular.
"I have OpenCL enabled on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 680, which is a first for WinZip, and I’m getting full utilization across all cores on the chips that I’m testing, which is also something new for testing WinZip," he said. "Good news for us guys in the lab."
The Standard Edition of WinZip will set you back $30, while the Pro Edition is priced at $50. Registered users of previous versions of WinZip (WinZip 15.5 or earlier) are eligible to upgrade to WinZip 17 at 50 percent off new license prices.
