ZipMagic v4.0
Software Review by: Clark Anderson
Publisher: ONTRACK Data International, Inc., 3030 Sterling Circle, Boulder, CO 80301
System Requirements: 
  * Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.x, or 2000
  * 8 MB RAM (16 MB for NT/2000)
  * 30 Megabytes free hard drive space
Product Type: Compressed File Management Utility.
List Price: $40
Rating: **** out of *****
Test Platform: Micron PC Pentium II 333 with 128 Megabytes RAM and an 8.4 Gigabyte hard drive, partitioned into 
FAT and NTFS, running NT 4.0 service pack 6a and Netscape 4.7.

ZipMagic was easy to install.  With WinNT 4, the install was run in the Administrator logon.  I think it took 
about 15 minutes.  

The quarter inch thick User’s Guide is better than most software manuals these days. The excellent on-line help 
in many cases matches the content of the User’s Guide.  They are both well written!

They provide a good overview of file compression and its history.  I am pleased to see that the User’s Guide 
and on-line help give credit to Phil Katz and his ZIP format. I have made personal use of PKWare’s PKZip 
version 2.04g and, more recently, version 2.50.  I was curious, so I asked: "What is your relationship with 
PKWare?".  Their answer was: "ZipMagic really has no association or relationship with PKWare other than they 
both use a similar compression library".  I guess, because of its popularity, the exclusive use of ZIP has gone 
the way of Frigidare and Kleenex. 

During Setup, a form with 3 Setup Options was shown: 1) Show Icon on Task Bar:  2) Add ZipMagic items to 
Context Menus (right click);  3) Associate Archives with ZipMagic.  By default, they were all checked.  I 
unchecked "Associate Archives with ZipMagic".  On the next Option Selection window, I unchecked the option to 
Install Email Plug-ins.

The Magic of ZipMagic is the way it alters the way that Windows Explorer treats archive files that have the zip 
extension.  They appear as folders, with the contained files appearing and behaving like uncompressed files!  
The zip files/folders did not take on the special zip folder icon until after I had rebooted.

After working with ZipMagic as a part of the Windows Explorer, I was annoyed, when I repeatedly clicked the 
ZipMagic title bar button, instead of the minimize button.  So I simply right clicked on the Taskbar ZipMagic 
icon and selected Properties from the popup menu.  On the resulting ZipMagic Properties window, I unchecked the 
‘Show Zip button in the title bar’ Setting.  My minor annoyance was gone!

While I had the ZipMagic Properties window open, I wandered through its user friendly and comprehensive 
configuration choices.  I noticed on the Zip Folders configuration page, that ZipMagic’s treatment of 
compressed files as folders can be disabled for specified hours.  This is to make it easier for scheduled 
backups or drive defragmentation.  On the Zip Folders Applications page, it is easy to specify a list of 
applications that are to treat files with the Zip extension as files (Not folders).  I listed my 
defragmentation program.

ZipMagic works well, out of the box, in Windows Explorer with zip files/folders. ONTRACK provides many more 
details at their web site: http://www.ontrack.com/zipmagic/ .  My system is not set up to test out any of their 
integration with a large variety of popular E-mail browsers.

When I put documents on my website, I PKZip the original file then use Zip2Exe -j to create a self-extracting 
file.  I tried an experiment:  1) I took an old 8K self-extracting file.  2) I used ZipMagic to extract it to 
the original 14K Word document.  3) I used ZipMagic to create a new Self-Extracting file.  4) The result was a 
very puzzling 86K exe file.

I telephoned their Customer Support with this puzzle.  The explanation is that ZipMagic is designed to handle 
very large amounts of data that can, for example, span several floppy disks.  With very large files this 
roughly 55K to 75K of "tare" space used by the unzipping program is insignificant.  It was also pointed out 
that most Email Browsers and Firewalls prohibit executable files.

ZipMagic is a very useful tool with an excellent user interface, but I will still keep my PKWare handy.