WinRAR 2012 is a shareware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Eugene Roshal and first released in autumn of 1993.[3] It is one of the few applications that is able to create RAR archives natively because the encoding method is held to be proprietary. Features WinRAR 2012 supports the following features: Complete support for RAR (WinRAR native conversion format) and ZIP archives and unpacking of ARJ LZH TAR GZ ACE UUE BZ2 JAR ISO EXE 7z and Z archives.[5] Multithreaded compression The ability to create self-extracting and multi-volume (split) archives. Data redundancy is provided via recovery records and recovery volumes allowing reconstruction of damaged archives. Support for advanced NTFS file system options and Unicode in file names. Optional archive encryption using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with a 128-bit key. [edit]Version history Below is a summary of version information. Version 2.00 was released on September 6 1996. Since version 2.90 the new RAR3 archive format is implemented. The new compressed archives cannot be managed by old versions of WinRAR. Since version 3.50 WinRAR 2012 adds support for interface skins and themes and support Windows XP x64.[6] Since version 3.60 WinRAR 2012 includes a multithreaded version of the compression algorithm which improves compression speed on systems with multiple dual-core or Hyper-threading-enabled CPUs. Since version 3.70 WinRAR features support for Windows Vista.[7] Since version 3.80 support 2012 for ZIP archives which contain Unicode file names in UTF-8.[8] Since version 3.90 WinRAR adds support Windows x64 natively and support Windows 7. Also it enhanced support for multithreading[9] Version 4.00 speeds up decompression by up to 30%. Windows 98 Windows Me and Windows NT are no longer supported the minimum Windows version required is Windows XP.