Does anyone know the best and/or cheapest file unzipping program I can get? I used winzip for a trial period but now it's expired and I still want to unzip files. Are there others?

There's WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com/). It does have a 40 day trial period but you can still use it afterwards.

Last time I used Windows, WinZip worked fine even after the trial period was over. It just had a "nag screen" that came up whenever you started it.

I found a little utility called ExtractNow. It's free and unzips zip, rar, ace etc files. Only unzips though and doesn't zip.

All I need is to unzip. How can I get ExtractNow?

http://www.extractnow.com/

If you only need to open zips and have WinXP, there's no need for anything. It includes native support to open and create zips.

WINACE! Better compresion (which you didnt ask for :) ) and can zip/unzip more file types than the above.

I just use Compressed(zipped) Folders utility that comes with Windows. Works great with Windows Explorer.

http://www.izarc.org/

install Linux :)

A very good Open Source zip program
7zip http://www.7-zip.org/

The main features of 7-Zip:

High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL
Supported formats:

Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB

For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Self-extracting capability for 7z format
Integration with Windows Shell
Powerful File Manager
Powerful command line version
Plugin for FAR Manager
Localizations for 60 languages

WinZip 8.1 if you can find it somewhere.

Windows XP has zip built in, but you don't get all of the extra formats like WinRAR.