PKWARE's PKZIP sweeps the field with 60 percent of the total for Best File-Compression Tool. After our readers completed voting for the 2004 Readers' Choice awards, PKWARE released the latest version of this product, PKZIP 8.0, which adds enterprise-specific enhancements.

PKZIP's BZIP2 technology can improve compression by as much as 20 percent on many file types, including database and text files. Multiformat capability lets users unzip .zip files, in addition to .tar, .gz, .jar, .uue, .xxe, .rar, .hqx, .tgz, and .cab files. PKZIP allows .zip files to exceed 4GB and allows ZIP archives to exceed 1TB and contain as many as 262,144 compressed files. Integration with Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes lets users automatically zip or encrypt email attachments. Right-click functionality lets users zip, unzip, or modify .zip files from anywhere within Windows Explorer or the Windows desktop. Users can edit the contents of any .zip file directly within a ZIP archive. PKZIP's intuitive GUI improves usability and eliminates the need for extensive user training.