Give your reasons. I use WinZip (Pro edition), because: - it is compatible with lot of formats; - it is fast on all its tasks; - it is updated with frequency; - it has very nice user GUI/support; - it has very nice set of features.
No best - it's whatever's available @ the moment or as the situation warrants. Xarchiver's a common one.
7-zip it give the best compression ratio and also quite useful when you want to highly compress saved games(checkpoints). Just one drawback that once the 7-zip file is created after that you cannot add more files to the zip. Also there is no option of KGB archiver it has by far the best compression ratio quite known for supercompressed games. I also heard of GTA: SanAndreas being supercompressed from ~4GB to whopping 10 MB(now that is some compression). Also you can get windows vista supercompressed to ~2MB having KGB as format(though it is pirated ).
i use jZip which wasnt on the list. http://www.jzip.com/ WOT says its "bad" but its perfectly safe to use and have been using for quite a while now, its an off shoot of 7zip i believe with a much nicer GUI tho.
software do you use: 7-zip think is the best: Perhaps WinRar, although I do not see the justification for the $29 price tag.
Actually, to be quite honest, WinRAR has nothing IZArc didn't have. Though it may very well just be me, WinRAR seems to unzip/zip a good bit faster, and, again, this just may be me, but it often is able to open files that IZArc wanted to stall on or refuse to open. That SHOULDN'T be the case as both programs are capable of opening the same formats and, usually an archived file will open unless it has somehow been corrupted. Nevertheless, I have found myself in that situation a few times, so, I kept it. Oh, also, when "exploring" archived files without actually unzipping them, WinRAR is far and away faster at showing and previewing files inside than IZArc was for me.
I think the one that comes with Windows doesn't support .rar files. And lots of files in the web are compressed in .rar
Correct, it doesn't. Notice that I said "has done all that I need." I deal with zipped files all the time, IT/SMB is what I do for a living. I just don't deal with the types of..err...subject of files that commonly use RAR files.