The other day someone asked me what they should do with a file they’d downloaded that had an ‘.air’ suffix. Good question. This person was fairly knowledgeable, but thought it must be a new type of archive, thus looked for an archive manager to open the file.

The obvious solution is to search Google, but this can lead to a number of legitimate and rogue results that will attempt you to download their software to handle your file. Can you trust some of these results?

OpenWith.org Desktop Tool is a simple application that adds an option to your right button menu. Simply highlight the file, select ‘OpenWith.org – How Do I Open This?’ and you will be directed to a section on their website that will offer information about the suffix and recommended applications. They are mostly free.

The only downside is that you have to rely on their recommendations. For example, for handling ZIP archives, they suggest the shareware WinRAR and state it’s ‘free’.