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From: andyc@hplsla.HP.COM (Andy Cassino)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: LHARC takes over?  Sure hope not!
Message-ID: <5440094@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 3 Jan 90 18:29:55 GMT
References: <6716@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 48

grieggs@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (John T. Grieggs) writes:

| Gee, I certainly hope that LHARC doesn't take over.  Why?  Three reasons.
| 
| 	1:  It doesn't exist on many machines.
| 	2:  It isn't that good.
| 	3:  It's as slow as molasses.
| 
| I did a benchmark on my AT clone at work, using a variety of filesets and
| all the compression programs I had around.
.
. (text omitted)
.
| LHARC was abysmally slow.  Compression was better than ARC or ZOO, but no
| better than PKZIP. It takes sooooo looooong to do simple operations that it
| is simply not usable (IMHO).  Does trees, tho.

Gee, I'd venture the opinion that LHARC runs lots better on the ST than 
it does on an AT clone!

I ran some tests on my ST this weekend. LHARC .51 was slower than ARC 
5.21 but it was neither abysmal nor unusable. It took maybe 30% longer 
to compress; un-LHARCing seemed comparable to un-ARCing. LHARC did a much 
better job of compression - up to 25% better in my tests! I concluded 
that any extra execution time was compensated many times over by the decrease 
in download times (and costs) due to the superior compression. Therefore, 
I don't mind using LHARC for GEnie uploads/downloads or other BBS downloads 
at low baud rates.

As for Usenet binaries, Steven Grimm has stated that LHARC source must 
be available before LHARC'd binaries are acceptable. When/if that happens,
I would think that conservation of net bandwidth should make LHARC the
preferred program.

(Then again, I hear ARC 6.0 is out and it is supposed to be better than
LHARC....)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those solely of the author,
            who has no pecuniary interest in the companies, products,
            or publications mentioned above.

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