JustZIPit curiosity or bug

R

Richard Steinfeld

Can anyone explain this one?

The program JustZIPit, from Avatar Software, is a very fast zip/unzip
utility. One thing that I like about it is that when unzipping, it first
creates a subdirectory, and then dumps the extracted files there. This
way, it's clear which files are freshly extracted, which would not be
the case if the files were laced throughout the hope of the original
..zip file.

Something that I really don't enjoy, however, is that every time the
program has been run, it places a distinct key in the registry stating
which file it unzipped. This can make for more registry bloat than we'd
like. These keys were displayed in the System Mechanic registry fixer;
they weren't presented in the registry fixer that's part of System Suite
(these are both regular payware). As much as JustZIPit is enjoyable to
use, registry clutter is not fun to have to deal with.

The publisher's web site has been malfunctioning for quite a while, so
it's not possible to go there for answers.
Can anyone provide some insight as to why this should be tolerable behavior?

RichardJ
 
W

wald

Something that I really don't enjoy, however, is that every time
the program has been run, it places a distinct key in the
registry stating which file it unzipped. This can make for more
registry bloat than we'd like.
Click to expand...

Isn't this just some kind of "Recent files" functionality? In that
case, only the last X unzipped files should be in the registry, the
oldest being deleted if a new one gets added. I'm pretty sure lots
of programs do the same thing for providing this functionality.

Of course, if *every* file you *ever* unzipped remains in the
registry, that would be a whole other story. In that case, I'd
contact the developer and ask for a clarification.

Regards,
Wald
 
R

Richard Steinfeld

wald said:
Isn't this just some kind of "Recent files" functionality? In that
case, only the last X unzipped files should be in the registry, the
oldest being deleted if a new one gets added. I'm pretty sure lots
of programs do the same thing for providing this functionality.

Of course, if *every* file you *ever* unzipped remains in the
registry, that would be a whole other story. In that case, I'd
contact the developer and ask for a clarification.

Regards,
Wald
Click to expand...

Good point, Wald.
I can't validate your hunch because I deleted all the keys.

Richard
 
R

Richard Steinfeld

Livewire said:
So unzip another 10-20 sets of files and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I did, and I wound up with around 50 keys tied to this program -- much
more than I unzipped. In fact, it seemed that there was an entry for
every program that I'd run regardless of whether I'd unzipped it or not.
I haven't compressed anything, by the way, so I cannot report on this
function. But all these entries make me nervous, and I think I'll
uninstall this thing and go back to the perfectly decent routine I'd
been using earlier.

To report on that, it's a zip utility that came with System Suite _by
OnTrack, not VCom_, version 4 and may or may not have come with
PowerDesk Version 4.0.13.1 (which was bundled with SS -- both are
installed on my box). This utility is easy to live with -- when you
click on the zip file, it displays the contents in the PowerDesk window,
as files in a directory. You can drag these files anywhere you want. In
the course of dragging, they're unzipped.

Neat, huh? I understand that PowerDesk v4 is now available free, so this
nifty zip utility may come along with it. PowerDesk is good, especially
a slick utility that displaye all your directories as a bar graph with
size stats, so you can see where your disk space has gone. It was
especially handy when I was infested with a virus that was furiously
clogging my hard disk with little files -- these would have eventually
choked my HD and forced me to erase the entire thing had I not caught
this! So, yeah, I can recommend the free version of PowerDesk. I cannot
recommend the current version of SystemSuite, which has been purchased
by VCom.

Richard
 
L

Larry Sabo

[snip]
I did, and I wound up with around 50 keys tied to this program -- much
more than I unzipped. In fact, it seemed that there was an entry for
every program that I'd run regardless of whether I'd unzipped it or not.
I haven't compressed anything, by the way, so I cannot report on this
function. But all these entries make me nervous, and I think I'll
uninstall this thing and go back to the perfectly decent routine I'd
been using earlier. [snip]
Click to expand...

I just checked and found 151 keys whose names contain "JustZIP." These
were almost all shell entries that allow invoking JustZipIt from
within those programs. Nothing I could see regarding files I had
Zipped/Unzipped. I really like the program--it's super-fast and so
easy to use. If it costs me 150 extra registry keys, I can live with
that. I'll keep an eye on it though and see if it grows with use.

I second your recommendation for PowerDesk. I, too, use version 4 that
came with PCTools (IIRC), but I put the freeware version 5 on every
system I troubleshoot. It is a real treat to use.

Cheers,
Larry
 
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