Archiving directories / zip format

[Zbigniew Szalbot]

Dear all,

>From time to time I want to archive a quite a few directories to
download them conveniently. I have been using tar to do it, endingin
up with a tar.gz file. But the problem with it is that I do not have a
unix machine at home so if I want to extract something or unpack the
content, there is no easy way to do that. My question basically is if
there is a way to end up with a zip file? Or are there any windows
tools to unzip and/or extract content from tar.gz files?

Many thanks in advance!

Zbigniew Szalbot