StuffIt

Offered by Smith Micro Software, company that develops and markets mobile software products and services and an extensive line of PC software products for business & home markets, StuffIt is a file compression utility. Install it on your machine and you will have access to basic file archiving functionality. Get StuffIt Deluxe instead and you will see that this edition takes the functionality to the next level by providing advanced tools to archive, shrink, share, back up, and encrypt your data.

StuffIt is available for Microsoft Windows and for Apple Mac OS X operating systems. Focusing on Windows alone, the application can be easily installed on Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. A simple setup wizard will help you install StuffIt on your PC; it will also help you install the StuffIt plug-ins for Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop.

You will see the following tabs in the upper left hand side of the interface:
Start – presents links to several wizards (they take you step by step through the process of compressing, emailing, transferring, and backing files up) and links to several utilities (schedule tasks, convert archive formats, create self-extracting archives).
Quick Tools – open and create archives by dragging and dropping them on the interface, create fully customized archive creation targets.
Archive Manager – view the archives stored on your machine, filter them, find the ones you need.
Search – search within archives to find the files you need.

So to sum it up, StuffIt offers the following functionality: take your data and archive it, access archives you already have on your PC, manage your collection of archives, search for archives and search for files that are stored within archives, email archives, upload archives to a FTP server, burn archives, schedule backup tasks to be performed automatically, create self-extracting archives and share them, encrypt and password protect your data. Thanks to the aforementioned wizards and user friendly interface, it is quite easy to access all the functionality offered by StuffIt.

StuffIt Deluxe is free to use for a trial period of 30 days.

StuffIt Deluxe puts properly good file archiving, backup, encryption, and sharing functionality at your disposal.