Message-ID:	<001b01bda51b$082b5700$624d08c3@arthur>
From:	"Arthur" <arfa AT clara DOT net>
To:	"DJGPP Mailing List" <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Subject:	Re: This is not a problem but...
Date:	Wed, 1 Jul 1998 17:17:22 +0100
MIME-Version:	1.0

>>Consider a file of 5MB. It is compressed to 3MB. When loading the
>>uncompressed file to memory, it takes a certain time (we're ignoring
caches
>>here).
>
>Sure! You must ignore the cache in order for your example to be true. :)
>That's what I'm saying.


That's what I just said, isn't it?

>>When loading the uncompressed file, it takes 3/5 of the time to load
>>from disc and I am assuming that it will take a much shorter time to
>>uncompress in memory (memory being faster than disc). If it takes less
than
>>2/5 of the time taken to load the uncompressed file, there is a time
saving
>>in loading.
>
>That's right. But usually programms are accessed more often then only once.
>Especially if we are talking about compilers or such things while in
>development phase.


True, but I was thinking strictly theoretically. In practice (especially
with my UDMA Hard Disc with onboard cache) loading the compressed file would
be slower. But think: how much of a speed overhead does compression have? On
my ST, uncompressing a 2MB zipped file takes several minutes. On a DX2/66 it
takes a matter of seconds. Why don't more people use data compression?

James Arthur
jaa AT arfa DOT clara DOT net

re certain little applets which will defragment memory and disc
on the fly in real time (if the roumers are true).

When I talk about bad memory management in Win 9x, I mean the fact that it
still swaps to disc even when "real" ram is not used, The fact that it lets
fragmetation happen on a major scale, and the fact that it takes so much
active memory to display anything.

Granted that NT requires 48MB of RAM before swapping occurs, but '95 isn't
so lean on memory. In fact the more you throw at it, the more it will fill
it up. As soon as you run *anything* on '95 it starts swapping on my 32MB
system, and this includes something as basic as the display properties
dialog box.

If I had my way, I would use an alternative OS, but Win is the industry
standard, so there.

</OFFTOPIC>

James Arthur
jaa AT arfa DOT clara DOT net

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