Best Unarchivers for Mac OSX

The standard BOMArchiveHelper.app built into OSX's finder is ok for simple compression and decompression Zip operations. If you're looking for replacements that can handle more formats, such as Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, and others then try some of my favorite free ones:

• ZipPeg
• The Unarchiver
• UnrarX
  

If you consume much content from the usenet newsgroups, then you will definitely want a set of programs that can recover missing information by processing often used "par" and "par2" files, and recombine sets of files. The best combinations I've found for this are:

• MacPAR Deluxe
• Split&Concat
  

 Suttfit Deluxe is a good classic Mac compression utility as well, however it does sell for $80.00.

Easy VM's with VirtualBox

If you need virtualization on the desktop in a production/development environment with full access to hardware such as USB ports, then you need to look at something like VMWare or Parallels.

That said, if you're an average home user, or a professional who needs occassional access to a Windows or Linux application, then you may want to check out VirtualBox. It's freely available as Open Source x86 virtualization software for Windows, OSX, Linux, Solaris, Open BSD.

VirtualBox.Org