Big thanks to our translators, as always!

We have officially released PACL 6.01 today. PACL has been in testing since last year, and this is first “official” release. PACL 6.0 brings many improvements to PACL, including our brand new multicore ZIP/ZIPX engine and full 7-Zip support. Here is full list of changes from version 4.xx:

• PACOMP.EXE:
  • New ZIP engine (requires PACLIB.DLL)
    • support for large ZIP (over 4 GB).
    • support for PPMd, WavPack, BZIP2, LZMA compression methods.
    • support for Unicode archives (both archives and files inside).
    • support for multicore compression (ZIP Deflate and ZIP LZMA).
    • New switches:
      • unicode : parameters and output are in unicode format.
        (PACOMPU.EXE removed from distribution)
      • 0 : start as low priority process.
      • c  : added new compression methods for ZIP.
      • o : force Unicode saving of filenames.
      • u, h : update and freshen actions for ZIP archives.
• PAEXT.EXE
  • New ZIP engine (required PACLIB.DLL)
    • support for large ZIP (over 4 GB).
    • support for JPEG, PPMd, WavPack, BZIP2, LZMA decompression.
    • support for decrypting PKAES and WZAES encrypted files.
    • support
    • for Unicode archives (both archives and files inside).
    • New UnRar engine with up to 30% faster uncompression.
    • New switches:
      • unicode  : parameters and output are in unicode format, (PAEXTU.EXE removed from distribution)
      • 0 : start as low priority process.
• PAENCODE.EXE
  • New switches:
    • unicode : parameters and output are in unicode format.
      (PAENCODEU.EXE removed from distribution)

PACL 6.00 is free upgrade to: all personal PA users, PA business license users with current license and all PACL 4.x users that purchased in past 2 years. Everyone else can get 40% discount to get latest PACL 6.0. To get free upgrade, new registration codes or purchase upgrade, please go to your account. You can download PACL 6.01 from here. Thanks for being patient with us… you will be blown away soon, i hope .

After pre-release testing (thanks to everyone who tested latest files via our Facebook and Twitter pages), here is our latest PA 2010 11.62 release. While we are still heavily working on v11.70 new features, we decided to refresh final build to make sure you get some improvements and fixes that we could give you right away.

Backup Changes

Here is what has been added to this release:

• Backup: You can now add 7-Zip AES file name encryption to the backup archives. Without proper password, nobody will be able to open these archives.
• Backup: 7-Zip spanning options have been added. In addition to previously available zip/zipx spanning, now you can also use 7-zip spanning in backup.
• 7-Zip SFX has been updated to the latest version posted on blogs in December.
• Optimizations: lowered the size of PowerArchiver’s main executable by 1 MB.
• Optimizations: reduced memory usage by 350 kb.
• Various minor improvements and fixes.

A lot more is coming in upcoming beta of 11.70, which is still few weeks away (no promises yet). You can download PA 11.62 from the download page. We expect rest of translations to be ready during the day tomorrow. Thank you!

now that holidays are behind us, we can go back and work on PowerArchiver 2010 11.7. Did you really think that this was it for PA 2010? If so, you do not know us well. We have been working on completly revamped web update feature that will introduce much better update system for you, our beloved users.

Old style update from PA 2010

We got the idea when one user told us via email, how much he liked PA but at the same time he also mentioned how constant updates are getting on his nerves. We were baffled, suprised, taken back even. How could someone not like updating PowerArchiver? We always believed that constant improvements made us what we are today. We laughed it off, replied how that is one of our assets and that he can disable updates if he wishes so (politely of course, eastern european way!).

Then I proceeded working on my computer: opened up Calibre to send some books to my PRS-505 and quickly cancelled update check, opened SE manager suite and quickly cancelled update check, turned on VLC and quickly cancelled update check… and I thought to myself – all these updates are quite annoying! Wait a second – could this be what our user was mentioning? Could it be that PowerArchiver is not the center of his universe (like it is to us)? Quite possibly! So i took it as a hint, and went on to time how long it takes PowerArchiver to update on my fast dual core computer and 4 Mbs connection… It took around 65 seconds until PowerArchiver 2010 11.60 was installed and running again (upgrade from PA 2007) and 8 clicks of the mouse. Now thats really not that bad… if you use PowerArchiver on daily basis. If you turn it on every once in a while, and get update screen each time, you might not like it that much. I might be getting old but i also remember how few of our standard forum dwellers also wanted better update system (less clicks).

After indentifying the problem, i went to contact our engineers to see what can be done about it. Answer was completly custom update system that is based on binary diff (bsdiff) and custom set of supporting tools developed from scratch! Since this was also mandatory for our upcoming Super Secret App, we got it greenlighted right away!

PowerArchiver 2010 - New Web Update for 11.70

Here are our design goals (everything is based on user feedback from forums and emails, as always!):

1. Smaller Installations. Our current installer is between 9 and 10 MB. We wanted to decrease update size to under 3 MB if possible. – 3x improvement in size
2. Less interaction. You already have PowerArchiver installed and running. You do not need to interact with properly done update. Target was to lower number of clicks needed to 4. - 2x less interaction.
3. Overall time for update. While 65 seconds is not bad, why not target 30 seconds or less? Lets do it! -2x faster update overall.
4. Better Web Update GUI:
   • Check for updates for all PowerArchiver products at the same time. Currently update checks are done one after other which looks a bit strange.
   • Better display for Whats New info. Text based whats new does not cut it anymore in 2010. Lets link it to our blog page which explains more and has pretty pictures.
   • Install PAOP and PAVD through web update GUI. Don’t have PAOP or PAVD installed and you are registered user? Why not include option to do so from update interface?!
   • More information on latest from PA dot com. We have half a million users check for updates every month, yet only small amount visit our site to see latest happenings and influence development of PowerArchiver. Lets improve that!

I hope you like this upcoming update. There will certainly be an beta release for this version, and quite possibly we will have few other things lined up. Rest assured, you will be informed on these new changes. We are not sure when exactly is this update going to hit the streets, lets hope it will be done during the February 2010. Check screenshot and let us know what you think on forums (currently you cant comment here with your forum account, we are in midst of reorganizing blogs). Once we have the system working (currently it looks pretty and does nothing ), we will also post benchmarks to see the actual difference in old and new update when updating from latest 11.61 release to 11.70. You can comment it on forums here.

New 7-zip SFX

While we were finishing up 11.61 release, which was quite important, we got reported issue with our 7-zip SFX. It turns out it was quite (terrifying) slow when you have many files in it (reported issue was with 80,000 files). So as soon as 11.61 was out, we turned into fixing and improving that SFX.

New and updated version has instant startup, better progress and extraction times that are similar as in PowerArchiver. If you are using our 7zip sfx to distribute files to your users, it would be much advised if you get the updated version.

Here is the updated release:
http://powerarchiver.com/test/PASZIPSFX-new.DAT

To install it, you need to download it, remove “-new” from the filename, and copy it to your PowerArchiver\Sfxs folder.

Thanks for being so great and happy holidays!