WinZip Driver Updater

Rincewind

Philosopher
R
Joined
Apr 25, 2010
Messages
8,750
Location
Adirondacks, NY - with Magrat!
Hi guys,

I've just had one of the regular Windows updates - I'm on Win 10.

One of the things that arrived with it was something called WinZip Driver Updater.

It tells me that I have 17 drivers that are obsolete, and it can update them 'for free', and then keep track of any new upgrades. However it requires me to sign up - $30!

Now it's not a huge price, but I thought I'd ask if anyone here knows of this (I can see it's a Canadian company) and if it's genuine?

Thanks in advance!
 
If you use Win 10 it has its own zip opening program, so unless you want to make zip files, there's not much need for Winzip anyway. If you open a zip file in Explorer, you'll find an unzipping menu appears.
 
Note that It's easy to make zip files in Win 10. You just right click in explorer and select the option to create a compressed directory. Change it's name to whatever you want to name your zip file then just copy files you want to compress into it. Now you have a zip file.
 
arthwollipot said:
My guess is that it hitched a ride with something else.
Click to expand...

Yeah. It's something that often gets bundled with other "free" (free as in beer) software. It's not quite malware, but it's useless, if not detrimental. There are a lot of driver updaters out there. I don't really see keeping drivers up to date as a critical issue. Generally speaking, if a hardware component is working with the current driver, it's not worth screwing around with finding the most recent driver.

ETA: As far as WinZip itself is concerned, it's really not necessary, and, IIRC, it's a "free trial" install that will then incessantly nag you to "upgrade" to the paid version(and I think it quits working entirely after some period of time). For most people, the native zip support in Windows is all that they need. If you want a zip program, 7zip is free and open source, includes a decent two pane type file manager, and supports a variety of compression formats other than zip.

As a general rule, for me, anything "free" that nags me to "upgrade" to a paid version gets uninstalled, unless I find it particularly useful and there is no decent alternative that doesn't do that.
 
Last edited:
Winzip? I haven't used compression programs in ages. With HDDs as large as they are now it seems like more of a hassle than anything else.
 
Belz... said:
Winzip? I haven't used compression programs in ages. With HDDs as large as they are now it seems like more of a hassle than anything else.
Click to expand...
I can't remember when I last zipped a file, but there's still plenty of need for unzipping. Zipped files are still easier to email, and it's handy to be able to combine a bunch of small files into a single one for downloading.
 
Belz... said:
Winzip? I haven't used compression programs in ages. With HDDs as large as they are now it seems like more of a hassle than anything else.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and compressing files doesn't make them much smaller any more either, especially since Office implemented the xml file standard in 2007.
 
Wudang said:
But you can zip a bunch of files and password protect the zip which is convenient for email..
Click to expand...
Except that a lot of organisations (including the one I work for) quarantine password-protected and encrypted emails because they can't be virus-scanned.
 
arthwollipot said:
Except that a lot of organisations (including the one I work for) quarantine password-protected and encrypted emails because they can't be virus-scanned.
Click to expand...

Don’t actually send the zip file by email: put them on OneDrive or Dropbox or something and send the link. It’s far more convenient.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom