Subject: REVIEW: FastJPEG, version 1.0
From: [email-masked] (Eyal Teler)
Date: 2 Mar 1994 16:35:25 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	FastJPEG, version 1.0

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	JPEG viewer, with ECS (HAM) and AGA (HAM8) versions.

	This program was provided on the coverdisk of Amiga Computing
Magazine, issue 71, March 1994.  See my review of this magazine elsewhere
in the comp.sys.amiga.reviews archives.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Christoph Feck
	Address:	TowerSystems
			Balbierstrasse 6
			D-67663 Kaiserslauten
			Germany

	E-mail:		[email-masked]

LIST PRICE

	Freeware

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		The AGA chipset and a 68020 or higher CPU are needed for the
		AGA version. ;-)

		The program will work with the old graphics chip set (OCS),
		contrary to what the magazine claims.

	SOFTWARE

		Workbench 2.0 or higher recommended, but not necessary.  Some
		features are missing when working with 1.3 - pictures larger
		than the screen cannot be fully displayed (they scroll with
		2.0) and wildcards cannot be used in command line.

COPY PROTECTION

	None.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 500, 1MB Chip RAM, 2MB Fast RAM, OCS
	Kickstart 1.2, Workbench 1.3, ARP
	Fujitsu 100MB SCSI drive in A590

INSTALLATION

	Just copy your desired version to where you want it (it has an icon
you can drag).

REVIEW

	What can I say?  It's a JPEG viewer, and it's quite fast.  The
picture quality is also not bad.  I tested FastJPEG with a few pictures and
was quite satisfied with its output.  It does dithering, and in interlaced
mode it halves the width of the picture and applies smoothing.  The results
are usually good, although not as good as a dedicated picture converter
could achieve.

	Here are some timings I took.  The pictures were all loaded from the
RAM: disk.  The timings are for a 7MHz 68000, of course.

	Picture size		Time (minutes:seconds, timed with my watch)
	--------------------------------------------------------------------
	  276x212		0:28
	  415x473		1:04
	  646x737		2:45 (picture not fully displayed)

DOCUMENTATION

	Quite a lot of documentation for such a small program.  There's very
little you really need to know, but it's all described in detail.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I like the speed and quality.  This is a very useful program for
checking out JPEGs.  I didn't like that some features were not available on
my 1.3 machine, but I see this as my fault for not upgrading.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	The JPEG viewer I had before, VJPEG, is almost four times the size of
FastJPEG, and takes more than four times longer to display a picture.  The
quality of pictures from FastJPEG is also usually better, because of the
dithering.  This is why VJPEG is no longer on my hard disk, and FastJPEG is.

BUGS

	None that I could find, not that I tried to find any.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	I understand that this program is continually updated.  I didn't try
to contact the programmer.

WARRANTY

	Coverdisk replacement by the magazine.

CONCLUSIONS

	If you collect pictures, and need some way to view JPEGs before you
convert them, then look no further than this program.  I give FastJPEG 9 out
of 10.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1994 Eyal Teler.  All rights reserved.

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