baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) (05/27/90)
Does anybody know of a good automatic disk compressor? I saw an
ad for a program called "Squish Plus" and it read as follows:
Squish Plus
o Doubles the capacity of any disk
o Compresses files up to 50%
o Works on-the-fly without special commands
Here's the easy way to make a 40 megabyte hard disk hold 80
megabytes of data, and get 1.4 megabytes of information onto
a 760K floppy. It's called Squish Plus, and it's the best
data compressor we've ever seen.
Unlike archive programs, it's completely automatic and invisible.
Your software operates just as before: all word processors,
databases, spreadsheets, utilities ---anything--- will work with
Squich Plus. Files are automatically compressed as they're saved.
And you get password protection, too.
This program was selling for $99.95. Has anyone used this program,
and how do you like it? Are there any other similiar programs?
Thanks in advance for any responses.dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips) (06/02/90)
In <3841@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>, baalke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke) writes: > Does anybody know of a good automatic disk compressor? I saw an > ad for a program called "Squish Plus" and it read as follows: > > This program was selling for $99.95. Has anyone used this program, > and how do you like it? Are there any other similiar programs? > Thanks in advance for any responses. Hi, I'm currently using Squish Plus version 2.00. I am satisfied. I use it to keep my news "compressed". I get about 30-35% more space that way. Shortly after I upgraded to 2.00 I got a call from the someone at Sundog Software asking me how it was working. I told them that I was dissapointed with the compression ratio. After a short discussion in which I explained my application, they told me that the ratio I was getting is about what would be expected. Apparently Squish Plus does much better on lots of little files than on a few monster files. I have tested that. I chose Squish Plus over some other products (whose names escape me at the moment) because it offers on the fly compression/decompression. The other software I looked at (hardly exhaustive, but...) would decompress in place, so you'd have to have free space available for the decompressed version. Granted, with Squish Plus you have to have a special "disk" file that is the place where files are kept. It has its own drive letter. Version 2.00 will let you expand this "disk" file after its been created. I don't think (but its been a while since I read the manual) that it will let you shrink it. I like it because even though it is slower, I don't need to have the extra disk space to hold the "unexpanded" version while I'm using it. For news, its fine. (I don't recall how much I paid initially tho'). If you're interested in more details about "what" it does (I don't know "how" and don't much care), let me know. -Doug --- Preferred: willett!dwp@hobbes.cert.sei.cmu.edu OR ...!sei!willett!dwp Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [in a pinch: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]
kdq@demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) (06/03/90)
Based on your description, I can't tell why Squish Plus is better
than, say, PKZIP, or ZOO, or any of the other PD/Shareware compressors.
Care to go into that a little more? Or would you like a copy of the
latest PKZIP to test?
--
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Kevin D. Quitt Manager, Software Development 34 12 N 118 27 W
DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St. Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266
VOICE (818) 988-4975 FAX (818) 997-1190
MODEM (818) 997-4496 Telebit PEP last demott!kdq kdq@demott.com
96.37% of the statistics used in arguments are made up.dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips) (06/07/90)
In <268@demott.COM>, kdq@demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: > Based on your description, I can't tell why Squish Plus is better > than, say, PKZIP, or ZOO, or any of the other PD/Shareware compressors. > Care to go into that a little more? Or would you like a copy of the > latest PKZIP to test? Fair enough. The reason I chose Squish Plus was that it *never* uses more disk space than the file consumes while compressed. When you read and write the file it is automatically de-/compressed. I chose this particular feature because it means you don't need to have the disk space available for the uncompressed version. For example, if you have a 100K text file compressed into a .ZIP file and you want to read it, you must un/de zip it. This means that in addition to the 55K (say) that the .ZIP consumes you need to have 100K free for the un/de zipping process. I like Squish Plus because you never need that buffer space, blocks are compressed and decompressed in memory, on the fly, between the disk and DOS. I also like it because I don't have to run pkunzip manually before I want to look at the files, and then delete them or re-zip them when I'm done. There is some other compression product that does do that step for you automatically; but it still happens; it still takes up extra room *on the disk*. Squish Plus does use memory for this process, however, and it helps to have extended or expanded memory to use for "buffering" space. Is this any clearer? -Doug P.S. Squish Plus requires you to set aside space on the disk for its uses (a Squish Disk file). However, since I keep news articles in my Squish Disk, it is always full or nearly full, so much so that I would not have the free disk space for the uncompressed versions of newsgroups. --- Preferred: willett!dwp@hobbes.cert.sei.cmu.edu OR ...!sei!willett!dwp Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [in a pinch: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]