PowerArchiver 2004 kan verschillende compressiemethoden gebruiken om bestanden in en uit te pakken. Ondersteuning voor alle gangbare formaten is aanwezig, zoals onder andere ZIP-, CAB-, LHA-, TAR-, RAR-, ARJ-, GZ-, en BZIP2-bestanden. Tevens kan men encryptie toe passen aan de hand van Blowfish, DES, Triple DES en AES algoritmes en beschikt het programma over een interne viewer voor verschillende afbeeldingen. Het ontwikkelteam heeft de eerste beta versie van 9.0 uitgebracht waar onder andere ondersteuning voor het 7z-formaat van 7-Zip wordt toegevoegd. De release notes zien er als volgt uit:
Major changes:Improvements:
- 7-Zip Support: create and extract from 7z files. 7-Zip is an new archive format with open architecture and very strong compression.
- New TAR/GZIP support: now supporting extended TAR specification.
- New Explorer View: considerably faster explorer view when going through archives, with completely changed way of browsing through hard drive which is now much like Windows Explorer and it supports explorer shell extensions.
- Compression Profiles: you can now create and use different compression profiles. It allows you to setup your compression profile and use it throughout most of PowerArchiver.
- UNICODE support for 7-Zip and RAR archives and better support throughout the application.
- "Normal" relative option of saving folder names when compressing single folder.
- Updated icons with more style and color.
- Improved 120 dpi support, now perfect throughout the application.
- Improved System Tray info.
- Changed some Configuration options to be easier to understand.
- Improved RAR support, now with smarter handling of multivolumes.
- Convert tool added to the shell extensions.
- Improved automatic package installation tool.
- Improved installer now recognizes current installation folder.
- Improved MSI installation for business users.
- Improved translation process for translators.
- Names added to the FTP profiles.
- Many other improvements, optimizations and bug fixes.