Think of an archive format an the ubiquitous ZIP format will be one of the first that enters your mind. Although it’s the most platform-friendly archive format, it’s rather long in the tooth, doesn’t offer the best compression, doesn’t get the most from previously compressed files (JPEG images, as an example) and can be slower to work with than more recent archive formats.

Problem is, you need a comprehensive archive manager and there are few better than the free PeaZip 3. This tool will enable you to create, open or manipulate ZIP archives, as well as the modern 7z format, tar and others. You can read from other archive formats such as rar, ISO and many others. No support for the Mac Stuffit, as that’s a proprietary format, plus don’t expect to open a rar archive, add files and then export. So, there are limitations.

PeaZip 3 is available for both Windows and Linux, both in desktop and portable versions, so you can take your archive manager on the road.