i love 7zip on my PC. I also  use iArchiver for my mac. That's awesome. I personally never liked Winrar.

I checked the actual in/out on the lan, it's actually about 160MB per second. You're right, are you confusing bit and byte?

Well (1) gigabit LAN means (divide by 8) that it maxes at 125 MB/s, 160MB/s exceeds the specifications of a gigabit LAN Even the 1000 vs 1024 bytes wouldn't explain this. Also, usually some overhead reduces this rate. So either something is measured wrong, it isn't a gigabit LAN (or you use multiple streams which I'm not sure routers for home use can do) or it measures the uncompressed data which could be compressed to fit a 1 gigabit stream, though you say you monitored the actual throughput of the LAN itself so that shouldn't be it. I'm puzzled at the moment.

Frankly, compression should be free. There's no sense in using the .rar format. I'm not paying just to use it.

And just because there are free decompressors does not mean I'm gonna use it. I could care less. If you want me to use your stuff never, ever send it to me as RAR!

Total Commander ftw ^^

*Just making you hit the view edits button due to irrelevance*

Someone introduced me to Universal Extractor. I love it! It extracts everything, including installers, plus, it outputs to a command prompt, which shoots the nerdiness factor way higher than any other extractor :p

Far as I know there are no free software which can compress .rar?  Although a few can decompress.

Ahh.  Well, nevermind that.  If decompressing it is free, why does it matter what format someone else compresses it in?  That just doesn't make any sense at all.

Why?

People put their time into developing it. Why should they not be compensated for it?

Or, are you one of those that feel they should reap rewards for others work at no cost to yourself?

Sick mind set, if you ask me.

I don't think it really matters anymore.  People who compress either use zip because they can't be bothered to use another format, 7z if they're more technically minded, or gzip/etc if they're linux types.  Rar isn't that common these days (unless it still is in the pirate scene, which I wouldn't know.)

It's still in use by the valve modding community.