I guess the difference is there are valid usable solutions to uncompress each format except shn, w/o opening a cmd prompt or running a batch file, maybe something has changed who knows? Usable? I do not know of any shn players. shn ipod? For the life of me I have never figured out why the people at winrar or winzip don't just provide a way to add these to their apps w/ appropriate switches. Winzip almost does like arc or lha, but not others. Who needs to extract so many, but everyone has a couple at any given time that they wish had a decent front end. I guess I am back on my quest. Thanks