I primarily use it to dump stuff to my desktop quickly or into a folder I am already working in, winrar supports this as well if I recall.
I find the file directory UIs to be inconsistent in many apps as some are built on old librarys and don't inherit the current OS UI standards.
You are right, it is a a matter of personal preference.
As for my Archive tool of choice I use 7-Zip http://7-zip.org/ , as you can only rely on Zip as being a common format that a typical users understands. 7-Zip is multi threaded and consistently makes smaller standard zip files than WinZip or WinRar. Also its own standard format often out performs winrar, accept when compressing some media files.