It's perhaps a little disingenuous to say it, but that doesn't make in untrue. Over the many generations that WinZip has been with us we've met many, many people who use it but not a single person who has bought a copy. And we're not talking piracy here; rather the fact that its shareware licence and the increasing raft of solid freeware and open source alternatives mean that paying for a zipping and archiving package isn't top of many people's agendas.

Of course, WinZip itself makes the bulk of its money away from end-user software sales, fortunately, but it still offers a powerful package for those who are willing to put their hands in their pockets. As usual, a trial version is available.

The setup will be familiar to anyone who has used WinZip in the past decade or so, as you choose whether to opt for the Classic or Wizard interfaces, although you do then head to a generous list of potential file associations. Lots of the usual suspects are to be found and it does you the courtesy here of telling you what programs said file extensions are currently attached to - a neat touch. You'll also find support for the likes of ISO, IMG, 7Z and many more.

Get the latest Dell Coupons and other computer coupons at CheapStingyBargains.com.

When you land at the program proper, it works in precisely the way it always has. The simplicity of the working interface has always been a strength of WinZip and it's understandable why they've not seen fit to meddle with it. You can utilise the buttons on the toolbar, drop-down menus or just drag and drop your files into WinZip's working window. It's that simple.

The new headline feature is JPEG compression, which it promises to do with no quality compromise to your images. Compressing a compression format is always an interesting challenge, so we lined up 31 JPG files that amounted to 10.7MB in disk space.

We then compressed them using maximum compression and got a file that, er, took up 10.7MB of disk space. That was the same whether we tried saving in .RAR or .ZIP format. It took roughly the same amount of time to do its work either way and the end result was 10.7MB in size, give or take 1KB or so.

Hmm. When we switched to using WinZip's new LZMA compression format, it again barely made a jot of difference. Factor in that LZMA isn't natively supported by the bulk of archiving programs anyway, and it did little to sway us (it does, in fairness, compress down non-image archives that little bit tighter).

It should be noted that we deliberately opted for colourful images with little white in them, which won't have made the compression job any easier, although less 'busy' images would already be more compressed by the JPEG format anyway.

There are plenty of further inclusions, such as the ability to work directly with digital cameras, and the program jumps between appropriate default views well. There's some more security coverage too, and the comprehensive nature of the file support is a real boon.

And, to be fair, WinZip remains a professional piece of software that's expert at its job. It goes about its compressions with efficiency, speed and flexibility, giving you easy control over just how you want it to work. It remains the easiest to use Zip program for our money, and it's a breeze to work with.

We do have a grumble, though. When you do go through to register and activate your copy, WinZip throws up a screen of information it says it requires. That includes, as you'd expect, your e-mail address, but there are also fields for your company name, location, address and phone number. Why?

Granted, it's not compulsory to fill them in, although that's not particularly clear from the screen you're presented with. But why should you even be asked such questions when wanting to buy a compression program? It beggars belief.

Finally - and this will be the killer for most - for all the qualities that WinZip offers, is it worth the 30 Euro asking price? The problem here is that, as is increasingly becoming the case with the likes of DVD playback software, it's a utility that few are willing to fork out for at all. For while WinZip 12 demonstrates both a strong program and the work of a focussed development team, it's still hard to see it flying off the virtual shelves. It's worth it, though, if you take your compression software seriously.

An excellent utility that continues to evolve and improve, without losing sight of what made it a success in the first place. But there are so many free alternatives out there that we can't see it having much of an increased take-up compared with previous versions.