During the installation of the Hamster Free Zip archiver, users are asked to additionally install software from partners (mainly Yandex products), be careful. Also during the installation process, you can choose which file formats to associate with the program.
The developers claim that the Hamster archiver compresses files faster than all its popular analogues. This is mainly achieved through an improved system for using multiple processor cores during an archive operation.
The Hamster Free ZIP interface consists of three main tabs: “Create”, “Open” and “Storage”, in which all basic operations with archives are performed. They contain the minimum required set of settings, the main thing is to specify the archive format, set a password for it, divide it into parts and set the compression level (minimum, medium and high). Everything is done intuitively to simplify user interaction with the interface.
Features of Hamster Free ZIP Archiver
- creating archives in ZIP and 7Z format, opening RAR, ZIP, 7-ZIP, GZip, CAB, TAR, LZH, ARJ, ACE, UUE, etc.;
- protecting the created archive with a password;
- adjusting the compression ratio;
- dividing the archive into parts of arbitrary or predetermined size (for recording on CD, for example);
- Drug’n’Drop support;
- viewing basic information about the archive being opened;
- There are 2 design themes to choose from - dark and light.
Advantages
- The Russian version of Hamster Free ZIP Archiver has a simple and clear interface, it will be easy for beginners to understand how the program works;
- high speed of archive creation;
- It is possible to connect cloud storage accounts (Dropbox, Yandex.Disk, OneDrive and Google Drive) and automatically upload the created archives there.
Flaws
- Experienced users may feel a lack of settings and advanced modes for working with archives.
I looked at the archiver that is on the computer and felt sad, it turned out that it was already more than a year old, and several updates had definitely come out. Out of curiosity, I decided to scour the web and see what new has appeared over the past year. It turned out that most of the archivers that can be found have two extremes. One pole is maximum simplicity, doing everything for users, trusting only to press the archive button. On the other hand, in order to make an archive, I dump out a bunch of all kinds of parameters for settings, where I don’t know which direction to move, and what to press to get at least some result. It feels like the interface was made by programmers for programmers, only using the logic they understand, trying to show how harsh it is, without frills in design. This was all until recently, until a new archiver appeared.
Before installing Hamster Free Zip Archiver, make sure that your computer is connected to the network and the Microsoft runtime is installed. NET Framework. You will have to launch the shell, which will download all the necessary files from the network and install the program on your computer. This installation method has one big advantage: we always get latest version, and minus people without an Internet connection will not be able to install the program. During the installation process you will be asked standard list questions, license agreement, folder for the program and everything seems to be there. Don’t forget to select Russian in the first paragraph for the program interface, so that later you don’t have to look in the settings where you need to switch languages.
When you launch Free Zip Archiver for the first time, you can’t believe your eyes, can an archiver really be so beautiful and epic, it’s just a masterpiece. Large beautiful pictures and buttons, perfectly matched colors and very convenient to work with. Everything is thought out to the smallest nuances and you will like it ordinary users. For example, files are added and dragged by simply dragging the mouse, but a more traditional option is also left through the “Open” menu.
At the top we select what exactly we want to do, create an archive or unpack it, add necessary files and click next. We select the location where the final files will be saved, wait a few minutes and everything is ready. 
When creating an archive, we can choose the degree of compression (three abstract gradation levels: minimum, optimal, maximum; you don’t have to enter any numbers), into which pieces to split the file and, if necessary, set a password. I almost forgot, you can only create ZIP or 7Z archives, which is quite enough for today. I recommend giving preference to the 7Z format; it is becoming increasingly popular today and compresses files better.
To unpack the archive, the procedure is similar: select the folder where the files will be written and wait a few seconds or minutes, depending on the size of the archive. The only bonus they offer is the opportunity to obtain information about the archive. It supports unpacking 12 of the most common archive formats today, which is enough for the average user, who does not have archives that can confuse Hamster Free Zip Archiver.
In the settings you can change the appearance of the program, allow tooltips, associate the program with archive files, but fine settings are absent so as not to confuse or confuse users.
Hamster Free Zip Archiver, thanks appearance, can be considered one of the new generation of archivers, to whom you become partial at first sight. For all its bells and whistles, it works consistently and reliably, which is what is required from a program such as an archiver. I recommend it for use by ordinary users; advanced users will not like its glamor.
The Hamster team did not try to reinvent the wheel; they took ready-made packages for working with archives, tested and well optimized, making a beautiful shell for them, and they turned out to be right.
Works great on 32 and 64 bit operating systems. The program is available in several dozen languages, including some quite rare ones; of course, there is a place for the Russian language here.
Official site Hamster Free Zip Archiver
What is Hamster Lite archiver and how to use it?Lately, I’ve been getting quite often questions like: “What is Hamster Lite Archiver and how to use it?”
Hamster Lite Archiver is a free archiver produced by HamsterSoft. A very interesting and useful program for the vast majority of PC users.Why useful? Yes, for at least three reasons:
- First— the program is not just simple, but elementary - designed for a person who has very little experience communicating with a computer! And I only met a few people who could not figure out the “control” of this archiver.
- Second— there is a Russian language.
- Third— “Hamster Archiver” is absolutely, completely free.
So if you are not a true WinRar fan, use it and don’t worry. This is an absolutely harmless and convenient program!
You can download this archiver at: www.hamstersoft.com/free-zip-archiver/
Well, about how to use it... Here are a couple of video instructions from the developers of this archiver:
How to create an archive using Hamster Lite Archiver?
How to open an archive using Hamster Lite Archiver?
In Russia, recently, without sufficient public discussion, a set of laws have been adopted that greatly facilitate the procedure for blocking any website. The Roskomnadzor organization, which directly sends instructions to providers to block their clients’ access to a particular site, willingly uses the vague wording of these laws. The blocking of socially significant sites - large media outlets and blogs - causes a particular public outcry. “Yarovaya’s Law” became the next link in the chain.
Among the sites and services that were blocked and may not be accessible from Russia:
- Grani.ru and other independent media;
- Alexei Navalny's blog and websites of other democratic politicians and independent journalists;
- X-torrents, bobfilm.net, dream-film.net, kinokubik.com, kinozal.tv, kinobolt.ru, rutor.org, seedoff.net, torrentor.net, tushkan.net, tv.serial-online.net, wood-film.ru, rutracker.org (Rutreker!) and other torrent trackers;
- Lurkmore (“Lurk”);
- Dosug.cz (moved to Dosug.so);
- xhamster.com;
- Wikipedia;
- Telegram and the innocent victims of attempts to block it.
Although the initiative to block access comes from Roskomnadzor, the direct executors of its decisions are Internet providers. They are the ones who block access to objectionable pages and write “the resource at this IP address is blocked by decision of government authorities” (quote from Beeline).
Proxy, VPN and other ways to access blocked sites
The blocking by Roskomnadzor is of a very symbolic nature; I can compare it to a barrier in an open field. It works out quite simply. I have collected several ways to access sites that Russian Internet providers simply won’t let you see. Some of these methods, such as VPN and proxies, also help you use services that are not themselves available to Russian IPs. For example, "Pandora".
Browser turbo modes
Many browsers, including Yandex Browser and Opera, have a function for compressing Internet traffic. This was useful in times of slow or limited Internet traffic. When compression mode is turned on, traffic does not go directly from the site to your browser, but passes through a third-party server that compresses it. Roskomnadzor prohibited the provider from showing us the server at the address where the site is located. But, using turbo mode, we receive pages from a special browser server, over which Roskomnadzor has no control.
To watch “forbidden” sites, turn on “Turbo” modes in the Yandex or Opera browser. I heard similar modes exist in Chrome and Firefox.
This is what the turbo mode button looks like in Opera:
This is how it looks in Yandex browser:
Proxy servers
These are servers that, like browser compression servers, redirect traffic through themselves. Unlike VPNs, they do not encrypt it and do not pass through all the data. Unlike turbo modes, they do not compress it. However, if you use a proxy, you will see sites blocked by Roskomnadzor, because your computer will directly connect to the proxy server, and not to the server where the site is located.
Lists of free proxies can be found on sites that collect them. These servers may be down, slow, or short-lived, but they are free. You can also buy access to paid proxies on the Internet. But I don’t focus on this, because I prefer VPN.
Sites that collect free proxies: Hide My Ass, Proxy4Free.com, Proxy-list.org.
To connect through a proxy server, install the FoxyProxy plugin (Firefox, Chrome) or its equivalent in your browser. Enter the proxy server IP address and port in the plugin settings and use it. The window in which you need to enter them looks like this:
If you have not specifically looked for a SOCKS proxy or do not know what it is, do not check the box next to “SOCKS proxy”.
Anonymizers
Anonymizer is a site that opens the page you need in a frame, first loading it onto itself and then showing it to the user. Such services are popular among office workers who have blocked social media. This is the fastest available option on my list.
Some anonymizers that I knew before or found for this post:
To open a page with an anonymizer, paste its address into a special field on its website. In addition, one of the Russian proxy services has collected a large list of anonymizers, among which he has identified the best.
Search engine caches
Unlike you and me, most large search engines are based outside of Russia. So do their search bots. This means that they have access to everything that Roskomnadzor has blocked inside Russia. And they store it in cache. In particular, our Dutch Yandex perfectly displays a post from Navalny’s LiveJournal, written after the blog was blocked. To have access to the entire site, you can enter, for example, “kasparov.ru” into the search and see a list of pages. The downside here is that navigating the site turns out to be quite labor-intensive, and the cache home page may be out of date and may not display recently added content.
Tor Browser
When Roskomnadzor blocked Navalny's blog, for many this was the last straw, and people became interested in Tor technology. This is a decentralized network of Internet nodes in which data travels a long way from the server to the user, making it impossible to track a specific user. To a greater extent, this system is convenient for those who want to hide their true IP for some reason. The ability to read sites blocked by your ISP is a side effect of this feature. Those who installed recently Tor browser, found that pages open through it very slowly.
RSS/Email Subscription
If you have a specific site blocked by Roskomnadzor that you want to read, add its RSS broadcast to Yandex feed, another RSS aggregator, or set up receiving updates by e-mail. In most cases, you can use not the RSS feed address, but the address of the site itself. The service itself will recognize the RSS feed and add it.
Some RSS aggregators:
- https://theoldreader.com/ - successor of the deceased Google reader
Among the services for sending RSS to email, in addition to Yandex feed, the only one that comes to mind is Blogtrottr. There you will have to insert not the address of a blog or other site, but the RSS address. In the case of Navalny's LiveJournal, this will be. That is, if you are dealing with LJ, you will need to add data/rss at the end. Anton Nosik described his experience with Yandex feed in pictures.
VPN
This abbreviation stands for virtual private network. You are probably already connected to your ISP using this technology. With its help, you can establish one Internet connection inside another (VPN tunnel). The external one may be unprotected, but the internal one, as a rule, is encrypted to a special server. As a result, the user receives the Internet on his computer not directly, but through a remote server, which can be located anywhere in the world and have a non-Russian IP.
I prefer VPN technology to all the methods of bypassing restrictions mentioned in my list, because with it the connection speed is reduced slightly, and the traffic is securely and completely encrypted. Unlike, for example, proxies, which do not encrypt traffic and do not close it on themselves. Encryption to a remote server in another country means that on the way to and from it, no one will be able to know what pages you are looking at. On the opposite side of the wire, no one will be able to find out who viewed the site and from where.
There are many VPN services, high speed and reliability are provided only by paid ones. However, Alexander Plyushchev found some kind of VPN service for a mobile phone that gives the first 500 MB at full speed.
For myself, I chose the VPN Private Internet Access provider (since I am their client, I will receive a small reward for registrations through the links in this post, but this does not affect the fact that I have been using them for the fourth year).
- First of all, he is American. The USA is one of the few civilized countries that seriously defends the right of people to privacy and confidentiality of correspondence. Europe cannot boast of this, so I have not heard of VPN providers from there.
- Secondly, PIA has mobile client and application for Windows. They are very convenient: they connect automatically, reconnect when the connection is lost (relevant for mobile internet), allow you to quickly select one of 20 servers in different parts of the world.
- Thirdly, PIA doesn't store logs for a specific user, but only stores them all together (perhaps now it doesn’t store them at all). And although its rules include a clause about disabling for illegal activities, the provider has deprived itself of the ability to identify the specific user who is engaged in it. As Private Internet Access creator Andrew Lee said, “We don't keep logs, period.”
- Fourth, PIA is serious fights for internet freedom: He openly joined the coalition of Internet companies against the SOPA and PIPA bills. These are approximate analogues of our laws on blocking sites on suspicion of piracy or other illegal activities. In the United States, public organizations, Internet companies and ordinary people forced Congress to vote against these bills, although the majority of its members were initially in favor.
- Fifthly, for PIA you can pay anonymously. I don’t use this opportunity, but now I was glad to see on the site that they began to accept gift cards Visa and Mastercard. These are cards with a fixed amount that can be bought in stores and banks. In addition, there is a whole market for such cards on the Internet. PIA also accepts Bitcoin.
other methods
Other solutions would include the Hola browser extension. This service, as far as I understand, is based on VPN technology and uses its user base to achieve greater anonymity, Thor style. It is free and allows you to manually select the IP nationality. In addition, the service compresses traffic and has applications for mobile phones.
Update: Another similar extension is http://fri-gate.org/ru/.
Conclusion
The most important thing to understand about blocking sites on the Internet is that it does not exist. You can block access to a site using your provider, you can block its hosting or domain, but never the site. Because for every provider there is a VPN, for every hosting - another hosting, for every domain registrar - another domain registrar in another country with different rules. This is the essence of the Internet, this is how it was designed. And he will always be like this. This is Pandora's box, opened in 1991. The only way to ban something here is to turn off the electricity.
Before sending files, photos, or documents via email, it is recommended that you archive the folder containing the photos or documents before sending. To quickly archive a folder with files, it is best to use the most best archiver Hamster.
How to archive files
Having launched the Hamster archiving program, you need to click in the top panel Create.
Hamster archive creation software
To select files and folders that need to be archived, click on the button Add files which is in the lower left corner. A window will open in which you need to select files and folders and click on the button Open.
The files and folders you select will be archived The selected file or files will be displayed in the archiver. Next, by clicking on the “Compression level” button, you need to set the compression level of the created archive. By clicking on the “Divide” button, this archiver can divide the selected files into several archives, for example into several archives of 5 MB in size, so that it is more convenient to send by mail, or several in size of 700 MB or 4.7 GB, so that they can be burned onto the corresponding CDs or DVDs. It can also be divided into several parts of 100 MB or 50 MB for sending to cloud storage. You can archive a file with a password by clicking on the “Password” button.
How to archive files in zip After preparing to archive files, you need to click on the button Archive which is in the lower right corner, and from the suggested ones select Save to computer.
The folder in which the created archive will be located A window will open in which you need to find the folder to which you will send the archive, for example, in the left menu in the Music folder, open new folder(5) and press the button Folder selection. The archive will be created very quickly and will be located in this new folder (5).
How to open a zipped file
To unzip files using the Hamster archiver, you need to click on archive right click mouse and select from context menu sequentially To open with And Hamster Free Archiver or open the archiver and in the top panel click on Open.
Hamster can unzip a folder with files After this you need to click on the button Open archive which is located in the lower left corner of the archiver. A window will open in which you need to find the archive that needs to be unzipped.
Unzip zip archive In both cases, the archiver will display all the files that are in the archive.
Before you unzip the archive, you can see the files in it Clicking the button Unzip, which is located in the lower right corner of the archiver, a window will open. In this window, you need to find in the left column the folder in which the files from the archive will be placed when you click on the “Select folder” button.