[Giveaway] MagicRAR 8.5 The Next-Generation Archiver for Windows FREE for 1 Week

If you review the list of unique benefits of MagicRAR 8.5 at Simon King`s MagicRAR: MagicRAR Features, you will see that MagicRAR is claiming to have 11 unique benefits not found in other industry leading archive utilities. We put MagicRAR’s claim to the test in this review, and check whether these unique benefits are really enough to make MagicRAR a viable upstart in the data compression space.

MagicRAR is produced by Simon King`s Utilities Group Pty Ltd., a Microsoft BizSpark startup company.

The Installation

The installation offers a variety of tools that you can choose among:



MagicRAR offers many tools not available in other archive management tools. These include MagicRAR Drive Press, a full disk compressor utility which I found extremely useful and have described in detail later in this review. In this dialog, I chose to install everything for the optimal MagicRAR experience.



After the installation, the MagicRAR setup checks for online updates. These online updates are unique because they have been built by the MagicRAR open source community at https://github.com/magicrar. The open source updates let MagicRAR create RAR files, among adding support for other formats added by open source efforts.

Creating an Archive



Pretty standard fare, you just right-click and that’s it. One nice touch is that there is a full menu with all available formats listed for you to pick from in a single click. In my experience, 7ZIP is the best compressing format. There is a nice touch here, because MagicRAR takes the guesswork out of finding which archive format actually provides the best compression – answering for the first time a hot topic of debate amongst archiving enthusiasts.

Guaranteed Smallest Archives



How can an archive utility guarantee to produce the smallest files possible, when each algorithm is optimized for different sets of data? MagicRAR leverages its extensible plug-in architecture with an Explorer right-click menu option called “Find Smallest Archive”. This option creates archives using each compression format known to MagicRAR through its plug-ins.



As you can see above, there is no guesswork left because MagicRAR’s Find Smallest Archive tool has done all the legwork on all of the files and folders selected for compression, producing definitive, scientific results on the best archive type available for the live user selection of data.

Browsing Archives



MagicRAR’s plug-in architecture is really flexible. But where the magic lies is in the ease of browsing archive files. Third party, stand-alone archive user interfaces are a thing of the past with MagicRAR’s Archive Folders for currently 61 archive formats. MagicRAR’s Archive Folders integrate directly into Explorer and you can browse inside all of your archives as if they were ordinary file system folders. Common shortcuts like drag-drop and copy-paste work inside MagicRAR’s Archive Folders just as they would on a real folder. All compression/extraction happens transparently. Best of all, double-clicking a document launches it with its real owner application; and when you save your changes, MagicRAR’s Archive Folders asks you if you want to update the original archive. And, unlike Windows’s built-in ZIPFolders, all archive management tasks are available directly inside Explorer. You can convert archive formats, check-out archive contents directly to disk and create shortcuts to them, delete files inside archives, lock archives, add protection data, make self-extractor EXE files, and so forth.

Archive Previews



Sometimes you want to just take a brief look at archive contents, instead of use a full-fledged archive management application (that’s kind of what MagicRAR’s Archive Folders really feels like). You get two sneak peeks in Explorer: When you float you cursor over an archive, a helpful tooltip displays. When you click the archive, the Explorer Preview pane displays full archive contents in an accessible, legible preview.

Outlook Previews



The Find Smallest Archive and Archive Folders features were enough to make me a convert, but MagicRAR is also the only archiver I have found where archive previews are available in Microsoft Outlook for compressed file attachments to emails. It is a very spiffy feature, considering you can open any file inside the archive with its associated owner directly from the preview!

Outlook Attachment Compression

Another Outlook feature ideal for corporate environments, attachments can be transparently compressed, with easy target format selection or turning off the compression feature altogether, through a handy menu in the Outlook ribbon for each individual email recipient.



MagicRAR Drive Press



I fell in love with MagicRAR Drive Press. The days of full disk compression are back! And only MagicRAR Drive Press offers a solution for this long neglected area of data compression on Windows. MagicRAR Drive Press is not an archive creator; it does not pack files into a single archive of an opaque format to the operating system and applications. MagicRAR Drive Press directly compresses your disk using NTFS compression, and all your applications and files remain fully accessible as before. MagicRAR Drive Press retains full system security on Windows Vista and newer operating systems while tripling space savings compared to default Windows NTFS compression. The results are simply mind-blowing!



MagicRAR Drive Press converts your entire drive in a fraction of the time it ordinarily takes Windows, and is ideal especially for SSDs which provide lightning fast drive compression speeds when paired with multi-core CPUs.

Shine and Polish



MagicRAR offers many other conveniences I noticed over time, like “Extract to Subfolders” not creating double top-level folders, and other nice details that seemed like minor things but really made the difference to me in my day-to-day work with archives. Ditto the Recursive Extract right-click menu item in Explorer for automatically sifting through all those nested archives – often of different formats too, at that – without having to manually extract each one contained within other folders or archives.

Stand Alone Applications



Also available are stand-alone archive management applications, wizards, and such – although I did not find it necessary to evaluate them, because all my needs were completely and conveniently met by the MagicRAR Archive Folders feature.

Buy Now, Pay Later, or Cancel



MagicRAR also offers a very innovative approach to pricing. You can place an order online at Order page and you will instantly receive your unlock key. But, your card will not be charged for the first 30 days! Per the money back guarantee, you are free to cancel anytime, but you still get to enjoy a full MagicRAR experience without nag screens in the meanwhile.

Conclusion

MagicRAR packs a terrific punch thanks to its extremely complete and mature, well integrated suite of products, including all-time firsts in the data compression industry. Priced at only $24.95, MagicRAR is a bargain.

Usability: 10/10

Innovation: 10/10

Performance: 9/10

Toolset: 10/10

Price: 10/10

GIVEAWAY:

In cooperation with Simon King from magicrar.com we are offering MagicRAR completely FREE to all our NotebookReview.com readers for the next 7 days (offer closes end of March 17th, 2013). Just send a private message with your email address to me. You will then get your license along with download link once giveaway has ended.

Spread the word, share this post and let your friends grab this wonderful software for FREE!

 

Looks interesting - I'm mainly just zipping folder for convenience, and didn't really like WinRAR because of the separate explorer program. MagicRAR seems to combine the best of both...

 

How does this compare to 7zip? Is there someone that has done a side by side comparison? I used Winrar but paying for something free that 7zip offers was more worth for me for my limited archival purposes and I mostly unzip files not archive it much so that would exclude my usage.

 

MagicRAR has comparisons with WinZip and WinRAR here:

Simon King`s MagicRAR: MagicRAR Features

You will see that of the 11 features here, 7zip has only the "Browse Windows XP Mode Files" functionality.

MagicRAR does include 7zip functionality, but is a superset of WinZip, WinRAR, and 7zip all combined.

Please enjoy.

 

I'll give it a go. Throwing you a PM right now.

 

Thank you very much for your participation in the MagicRAR give away!

The give away has now concluded.

Please enjoy!

 

I've been using it for a few days, and I can't really say I'm blown away. I'm not crazy about how the program integrates with Windows - if you want to open an archive, it doesn't pop up a separate program window but stays within Explorer. Also, unless I'm missing something, I don't see the ability to open a self-extracting (.exe) archive by using a shell extension.

I'll play with it some more, but I'll likely end up uninstalling and going back to 7Zip. Were I a paying customer, I would absolutely have canceled within the first 30 days. Having that option is quite nice, rather than having a restrictive demo or having to pay up front.

 

Thank you for the feedback!

If you are coming from an Apple universe, it may be anathema to you to have applications that integrate so well into Explorer (since Apple has always lacked that kind of extensibility, technically referred to as a shell namespace extension in the Windows world).

Did you use the "Show Archives as Folders" link in the MagicRAR program group to disable this integration? MagicRAR does actually ship with many stand-alone applications, most notably the MagicRAR Studio application, which may fill your craving of having a stand-alone application manage archives instead. However, this preference would not be typical of most of our users, as MagicRAR is all about simplicity.

You may open self extracting files by simply renaming their file extension to .7zip from .exe. And I am glad to hear that you appreciate MagicRAR's unconditional 30 day money back guarantee, AND the free serial that you get issued BEFORE being billed.

Did you have a chance to evaluate the other 10 unique benefits in MagicRAR, say Drive Press or any of: Simon King`s MagicRAR: MagicRAR Features

 

It's actually not, considering that I've been using Windows far, far longer than OS X.

If it's all about simplicity then this,

should not be necessary. How is that simpler than right clicking on a file and selecting extract to...?

Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the product. I'm just saying that for the overwhelming majority of the computing public, this program is simply not necessary.

 

Please check the open source repository on GitHub for MagicRAR ( https://github.com/magicrar). The user-extensible plug-in architecture described there should make it clear to you why MagicRAR cannot treat .EXE files as archives. Unfortunately, this is a technical limitation - and one that is easily transcended, fortunately. However, since I feel you have raised a valid concern, I will go ahead and escalate your request for some kind of special .EXE file handling from the MagicRAR folks, so you can have your way (outside of the MagicRAR plug-in system).

Since you appear to like using Explorer right-click menus (even though you dislike the full integration of archive folders), did you have any thoughts on MagicRAR's unique "Find Smallest Archive", "Recursive Extract", and "Extract to Subfolders" right-click options? These are extremely convenient right-click tools, which in the opinion of this person, far outweigh the disadvantage of being unable to extract .EXE files directly from the right-click menu. And, to the best of my knowledge, they are missing in all other tools.

I am still a bit perplexed as to why you enjoy Explorer right-click menus but dislike the full Explorer integration. Since your signature refers to a MacBook Pro, I had previously supposed that your Mac experience would be unfavorably skewing your perception of the benefits of the shell namespace extension technology, which is unavailable on the Mac and is only available on the PC, and only with MagicRAR at that. Please excuse me if I overlooked any of your PC experience there.

According to MagicRAR's user surveys, the shell namespace extension technology makes this product extremely easy and simple to use for the overwhelming majority of the computing public; because unlike other tools, there is no custom user interface to learn. Indeed, the Magic of MagicRAR is that all compression/extraction inside archives happens completely transparently to the end-user. Did you have any insights on why, as a user, you would appreciate the right-click menus, but not the ability to be able to directly browse inside any archive? I am sure this feedback would be much appreciated by the MagicRAR folks.

I do see your point that the shell namespace extension would not be appreciated as much by users who have a preference for using stand-alone applications - whatever the underlying reason. Which is why I felt it necessary to ask you whether you had had a chance to evaluate MagicRAR Studio. It is a very capable application, one that can work with more than one archive at the same time, and does offer some interesting tweaks. Personally though, I cannot vouch for it - because I am very much enamored with the shell namespace extension - even though I do consider myself a very technical and adept PC user.

 

I have great news! The MagicRAR folks have agreed with you that in a tool of this caliber, an oversight of this magnitude cannot be justified due to the technical architecture of the product. They added a shim to the plug-in mechanism that re-routes EXE files to the standard-bearer plug-in of the suite. 'All in a days work,' says Simon.

This update has already been published live in MagicRAR version 8.6! Thank you very much for this great suggestion, and please enjoy the new version - available for immediate download at How to compress files with Simon King`s MagicRAR.

Once again, many thanks for your feedback. Real-world insights such as yours make all the difference.