AutoZIP II 4.5.5

AutoZIP II is a free versatile archive tool with support for most archive file formats. It creates ZIP, ISO, 7Zip, and TAR archives (among others) and can read and extract an even wider range of well-known archive files, such as CAB, RAR, ACE, ARJ, CHM, or LZH. Its excellent compression ratio together with its extensive functionality makes this archive app stand out from many of its competitors.

Once you installed the toool (note that the program requires administrator privileges to work correctly), you won’t find many archive types that AutoZIP II cannot deal with. The program’s interface is clear and easy to learn and navigate – a bar with oversized icons overlooks the main window, allowing you to access the program’s main features quickly and conveniently. Here you will find specific icons for FTP, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, which will allow you to add archives not only from your PC but also from any of these sources.

AutoZIP II boasts of offering a much better compression ratio than WinZip, WinRAR, and Xz, which came out to be absolutely true right from the first comparative tests. The ratio is excellent, and the processing speed will surely surprise you.

The program comes with some nice interesting extra features that you will not easily find in similar tools. It can password-protect and encrypt your archive files, create executable files for easy extraction, split large archives into as many parts as needed (and merge them, of course), and e-mail your archives directly from the program’s main interface. It can also resize your BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, or TIFF image files on the fly – the program will downsize your large image files without altering their aspect ratio to any of the ten dimensions provided, between 140x110 and 1920x1080.

One of the features that struck me most was the possibility of scheduling zipping and unzipping tasks. You can determine an exact time on a specific date, and let the program perform any of these tasks annually for you without further worrying. Tasks can also be scheduled to be performed monthly, weekly, daily, or simply as a one-off task. This amazing feature works even with password-protected archives, provided that you feed the program with all the information it needs to open the file.

All in all, AutoZIP II is a surprising tool full of interesting extras. And the fact that it is a free app makes it even more surprising and interesting.