Besides if you do prefer to use an application to compress and decompress files WinRar is far more versatile http://www.rarlab.com/

I don't know about the current version but the previous trial version never stopped working after the trial period but just kept nagging you each time you used it. It can handle zip, rar files and more. In fact it can even extract files from an iso image taken from a CD which can be very handy.