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WinZip 11 drops OFFICIAL Win9x support


galahs

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WinZip, one of the best pieces of utility software ever made for Windows has now OFFICIALLY dropped support for Windows 95, 98, Me and NT in its latest, version 11 release.

The good news is it appears to still install OK on Windows 98 if you accept the following warning.

winzip11hg4.jpg

WinZip now allows you to unzip RAR files :D

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No great loss. I quit using WinZip sometime around late 1999, early 2000. There are so many alternatives out there, many are freeware and do a better job than WinZip (more formats, more options, faster operation, etc).

Like I said, no great loss.

Now when Anti-Virus companies stop releasing updates for Win98, that's when you should start worrying. Although, even if that happens, there are open source AV solutions out there that support Win9x (ClamAV for example).

Win98 is still a viable OS, and will remain viable for at least another decade, in great part thanks to the open source community.

Note to Microsoft: Don't make the same mistakes again. In your next generation OS you should include some kind of OS expiration mechanism, so that after a certain amount of time (5 years for example), the OS stops functioning, and the user is presented with a message upon booting informing him (or her) to buy an upgrade.

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an expiring feature whould be annoying, but then again you usually reinstall windows less than every 5 years.

but i agree winzip is not that great, i have winzip 6.1 16bit still because that can be more useful than pkunzip (dos) which has not support for folders.

Tugzip is probably the best because it supports so much.

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Forget about WinZip, go with Tugzip or 7zip...

Note to Microsoft: Don't make the same mistakes again. In your next generation OS you should include some kind of OS expiration mechanism, so that after a certain amount of time (5 years for example), the OS stops functioning, and the user is presented with a message upon booting informing him (or her) to buy an upgrade.
Vista already does that.

...and then users that don't want to or need to upgrade will find ways around it :whistle:

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WinZip, one of the best pieces of utility software ever made for Windows has now OFFICIALLY dropped support for Windows 95, 98, Me and NT in its latest, version 11 release.
No problem. WinZIP is and always was obsolete. :)

I use 7-ZIP. :thumbup

What irritates me instead is GIMP. The GIMP (open source) guys were the first who dropped

pre-2000 versions ... :realmad: :realmad:

i have winzip 6.1 16bit still because that can be more useful than pkunzip (dos) which has not support for folders.

??? PKUNZIP (DOS) does NOT support "folders", but it supports directories ... isn't it good enough ? :)

BTW: Latest version of PKUNZIP is 2.50 ...

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i mean unziping zip files with directories,

the version i had i couldnt unzip files whcih had a directory structure

without all the files going into the same folder

dont know what version i was using

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:whistle: Yes indeed there are plenty of free zipping programs outthere that still run on 98 and lets be honest you cant expect every company to continue to support 98 or even 95 its concievable that 3rd party apps are needed with any pre xp os.Its a shame but its a fact of life.
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zdnet.com

download.com

cnet.com

say it supports 98\me

it appears that it *may* not work on 95 and nt4

where used to no support anyway

its not like microsoft supports 9x so niether does

winzip but it works which is the main thing

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i mean unziping zip files with directories,

the version i had i couldnt unzip files whcih had a directory structure

without all the files going into the same folder

dont know what version i was using

FAILURE to read the manual or instructions on screen:

PKUNZIP -d WOW.ZIP

:thumbup :thumbup :thumbup :thumbup :thumbup

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oops

it was ages ago i used pkunzip so i dont remeber it

(win95) i just used to drag a zip file onto it and it would extract it for me

i thought this was normal till i tried something else (some unzip32?)

than i started using winimp http://www.technelysium.com.au/winimp.html (free)

which allows you to create folder trees within the program

than i found out about tugzip so now i have tugzip and winimp

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And WinZip 10 isn't about to time out either. And ZoneAlarm's older version won't stop working. Etc.

Just because newer versions of most stuff will stop testing on 9x systems doesn't mean folks can't use slightly older versions that do the job and were tested on 9x.

Like if you bought Nero 7 you could use 7.2.7 on 9x and the latest 7.5.7 (on up) on XP, Vista, whatever.

Not the end of the world for 9x yet. Just more and more fussing and bother finding the right combination of things to use.

I'm using McAfee VirusScan Home Edition 7.03 with the latest 5100 engine and daily DAT's on Windows XP right now. I subscribe to the latest but wanted to see how the old thing worked and it still does. Automatically updates too. (It can't do that on 9x though. It needs manual extraction to update on 9x.) McAfee Firewall 4.02 still works on XP as well.

See, the software didn't stop working. We just go through a few more hoops and ladders when not using stuff currently being tested. (And the latest "finished" McAfee is really being publically beta tested. Lot's of unusual stuff happening with it, as with most brand new products.) I didn't have a problem with it, but I like the way this "unsupported" firewall fully passes ShieldsUp, whereas the current version has closed ports where they should be stealthed.

Sometimes older is better, at least when stuff is really new.

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Plenty of alternatives out there for pretty much anything and everything when it comes to Win98. (Although, not all are open source or freeware.) That goes for AV, firewall, word processors, and other core utilities. There are few reasons for the phasing out of 9x support, but I think there are 3 that seem primary.

A bit off topic, but...

1. As developers update/release new versions of their software and/or software suites (which is quite normal) many decide to use the opportunity to clean up their codebases, many times this means dropping support for 9x. Interestingly enough this is a result of many developers switching to newer development platforms such as .NET which are inherently NT oriented. So in many cases upgrading their codebases means they must drop 9x support, or face long and costly redevelopment cycles. This is not accidental though.

Which brings me to my next point... Microsoft.

2. It is no secret Microsoft would like to see anything 9x related drop dead and disappear. (In fact I can probably dig up a few quotes from Microsoft head honchos saying stuff to that effect) If you look at what Microsoft has been doing during the past 4-5 years that much is obvious. They develop tools many (you could say majority) of WinOS software developers use on their projects. It's no secret that Microsoft wants to rent us their software, instead of selling it. (There was a series of articles few years back about this. It would be cheaper for large corporations to rent software instead of buying it.) So because of this, Win2000 and XP will suffer a similar fate.

Also lot of it has to do with marketing...

3. Lot of software publishers and/or developers implicitly do not allow older version of WinOS (9x, NT 3.x, etc) to be listed as supported even though in many cases software in question supports these operating systems just fine. Simply because they believe that if a consumer/buyer (individual or corporate) sees support for such "antiquated" systems, software in question might depreciate in their eyes:

Individual buyer: This supports Windows 98/ME?! Ewwww! This is crap I bet!

Corporate buyer: This supports Windows 98/ME?! Why haven't they updated their codebase?!

In reality your average buyer (individual or corporate) is not that bright. Sadly, your average buyer (individual or corporate) makes up the majority of the target audience for whatever latest bloatware MS decides to release. We are a minority. A slightly brighter minority, in most cases at least. So we don't matter in the eyes of Microsoft.

But no worries, there are plenty of alternatives for WinZip, or ZoneAlarm, or whatever...

Edited by Lunac
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