I’ll add more on my review later, but needless to say, I’m switching from WinRAR to 7z.  To be honest, I’ve used WinRAR for the past 10 years or so and wanted it to be the best. While great, it’s not the best, 7z (in my tests which would mimic my use, this is in no way scientific) beat WinRAR in almost all the scenarios, except for JPG images (I believe WinRAR has a special algorithm for that, while 7z does not, but don’t quote me).  Below are the restuls and the set ups.

The first 2 tests are of the first, which consists of all my files from my collegiate carreer (undergraduate, masters, doctoral and the undergraduate work for my fiance), including powerpoints, images, word documents, pdf, movies, images, sound files, zip files, etc.  There’s a good assortment of files.

The second is of a very large website and intranet I’ve designed and managed, consisting of an even larger mix of files.  I will update the file types soon.

Open the downloaded executable with WinZip / WinRAR, etc. OR run the following command from a command prompt: SQLEXPR.EXE /x:c:\sqlexprtmp

Find the installer package sqlncli.msi and run it.

When prompted, select Uninstall and allow the uninstallation to complete.

Re-run the SQLEXPR.EXE installation executable. No reboot is required.