WinRK

[LovePimple]

I dont know whats happened to the WinRK project, but the following information was posted today (02/11/2007 09:36 PM) by Matt Mahoney in the MC guestbook.

About WinRK. I did not see how it could succeed as a business model. Why would anyone buy it when there is so much good free competition (zip, gzip, 7zip, etc.) that is bug free, fast, uses not too much memory, and supports standard formats with good enough compression. It is not all about the best compression ratio, but if you really want it, paq8jd, durilca, ppmonstr and all the other top compressors are free.

IMHO WinRK had a complicated, nonintuitive, and buggy user interface and too many options. The free 30 day trials expired as soon as you installed them because they had fixed expiration dates. Malcolm Taylor knew about the problem but never fixed it. If you read the forum on his website, he had too many other bugs to fix. I guess in the end the easiest thing to do was withdraw the product.

Is the WinRK project dead?

[Black_Fox1]

Is the WinRK project dead?

I dont think Malcolm would end without a word after so many years... All in all, there seems to be a way to activate it, it could be used at least for testing (=> promotional) purposes...

[Nania Francesco]

I am in agreement with Matt Mahoney, to this point it I do not remain that to put it Open Source as he had to make sin from the beginning!

[encode]

I guess, currently Malcolm just have no spare time!

Note that I think WinRK is the best! Also I like its GUI! But:
1. It is not free. However, cracked versions of both 2.16 and 3.03 flotating over the web.
2. Too many bugs!

So, with some improvements and better market strategy WinRK can be the worlds best!

Also I think Malcolm is number one in data compression!

[Black_Fox1]

cracked versions of both 2.16 and 3.03

This alone means WinRK is popular enough for even not-so-compression-oriented-people like those from F4CG (IIRC) to crack it... Even though I run it only for testing purposes.

One thing I really like about WinRKs GUI are the progress bars... if the standard progress bars in Windows were like those

Fix the bugs, implement a right-click menu as in WinRAR and I think theres a new favorite WinR* program

[Nania Francesco]

Search or gain, this is the problem, for me it is a pastime to create programs of jam like playing to football or other. In the light of that to my staff to seem largest than all is Matt Mahoney without a doubt in how much its PAQ has incredible possibilities of development! But we do not forget the same Ilia and this Christian Martelock!

[LovePimple]

In the light of that to my staff to seem largest than all is Matt Mahoney without a doubt in how much its PAQ has incredible possibilities of development! But we do not forget the same Ilia and this Christian Martelock!

I agree!