After eight previous versions and a history stretching back to 1986, you might think the Stuffit developers would run out of ideas for their marketleading archive tool. But version 9 includes new features to take this program even further ahead of the competition.

You can now compress your digital photo collection with no loss of quality. And, while Zip files would save you less than one per cent of space, Stuffit’s own Stuffit X format can reduce the file size by up to 30 per cent, especially useful when compressing jpg files. This would quickly translate into real savings in bandwidth or disc space and means you can archive files with fewer discs.

Previously it was inconvenient to hide your images away in an archive, but Stuffit can include thumbnails within an image archive, so you can browse it without having to extract every file. There’s even an option to build redundancy into the file; extra blocks of information that could allow corrupt files to be automatically repaired.
Whatever type of file you’re compressing, security has been improved with a Whole Archive Encryption feature. Choose your algorithm from the selection (up to RC4 512bit) and the resulting archive is made read-only and can only be viewed by someone who knows the password.

There’s also easy integration with your anti-virus tool, better compression and decompression speeds and an improved interface.

It’s the best version of Stuffit ever and if you need more than basic Zip functionality it’s well worth giving it a try.