So, a long time ago, I tried using 7zip for extracting a zip file or similar. I don’t think it was a RAR file at the very least. I noticed that 7zip was slower than WinRAR, which is what I had always used since it was the first I’d heard of a program that could unzip files.
Fast forward a few years, I had some money and bought a WinRAR license, just because I liked the program that much.
Fast forward a few more years, and I use Nanazip on Windows and Ark on KDE/Fedora.
I will always remember the book stack icon for zips/RARs/etc. fondly and just how much faster (again way way back in the day). Multipart RARs were how I got a lot of stuff back in the day, even larger mods!
Anyway, I know it is popular to hate on WinRAR, but for me, it will always be remembered fondly for what it was. :,-)
I’ll be honest with you, I never cared about any of that stuff when I was younger, so it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to me back then.
As I said, the zipped file was not a RAR file, but this was almost 20 years ago, so that is a bit fuzzy. 7zip was much slower for the file that I unzipped, that much I do know! I still remember seeing a progress bar on 7zip, which I had never seen before on WinRAR (unless it was one of those multipart files, which was rare even then for me!). That is what stood out to me and why I can remember it so well. I even remember asking myself, “Why do people prefer 7zip if it is slower?”!
I will say these days I don’t use WinRAR, and just stick with Nanazip and Ark! I care more about stuff like that now though, so I appreciate you giving me more context! :-)