I don't know about the big compression tools, but the Freeware 7-Zip is an excellent tool in decompression and, I believe, compression as well. Its "native" file format is .7z, which is quite flexible in terms of compression methods/rates, though you need to do a little tinkering and file-searching on your own to get the best results.

I'm just an amateur though, so yeah. I just use the thing for my all-in-one decompress everything, since I'm too cheap to pay for WinRAR and Winzip both.