Did WinRAR change its usage policy?

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peppergomez

2[H]4U
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Sep 15, 2011
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I ask b/c I've had the free version on my computer for years now. As of this evening, I cannot open RAR, ZIP, or PAK files, and WinRAR displays a message that it's not free and can only be used for 40 days. That's odd, since I haven't updated my installation of it in years.

I'll go ahead and redownload and reinstall it, but if they have changed their policy, can folks recommend a good free alternative?
 
You can get WinRAR free by completing one of the TrialPay offers - I did that like 10 years ago and it didn't cost me a penny, just a few minutes of time, and the license is good forever. TrialPay got paid by WinRAR, WinRAR got paid by TrailPay, I got WinRAR free, and TrialPay got paid by BlockBuster Video (where the offer came from), it was a win-win-win-win situation all around.

Doesn't hurt to offer RARLAB at least SOME kind of support since you used their product for a long time without ever paying for it, doing the TrialPay thing gets it for you free and they get some support from it.

Don't be a cheap bastard forever. WinRAR has never been a free product, it's been Shareware since day one. :)
 
WinRAR is still better than 7z in some areas. UX of the interface is slightly better, WinRAR supports recovery records, which by itself is critical for archiving of large sets of data! Also for me Winrar is faster than 7z when using the best or higher/st compressions and parameters.
Another thing - 7z uses a LOT more memory for a given dictionary because it seems to allocate it per-core/thread, unlike winrar. Most of the time 7z compresses better but the differences are not that big to make me abandon the goods of winrar (recovery). Still using 98% of the time winrar.
And yes, AFAIK Winrar was always shareware, not free.
 
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