BinHex encoding of files is a Macintosh standard, and is not seen much in the PC world. Most of the BinHexed files found on the Internet are Macintosh-specific binaries, and will not run (or worse, will cause your computer to crash) on a PC. Once in a while, however, you may encounter data files created with word processor, spreadsheet, or database programs that have been transmitted as BinHex file attachments by certain email programs, particularly Eudora or Eudora Light. If you receive such a file as an attachment, and you use Eudora or Eudora Light, you can save the attachments as separate files to your local computer.
You can usually recognize BinHex files by their filenames, which have an .hqx filename extension. Recent versions of WinZip can handle BinHexed files as long as the extension is correct. You can get WinZip, which is shareware, from: