Re: Intel introduces new compression technology for surfers [CNN]

[Steve Schear <schear@lvdi.net>]

>At 08:59 AM 1/20/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
>>
>>Forwarded message:
>>
>>>    
>>>               INTEL INTRODUCES TECHNOLOGY TO SURF THE WEB FASTER
>>>                                        
>>>      January 19, 1998
>>>      Web posted at: 9:35 p.m. EST (0235 GMT)
>>>      
>>>      HILLSBORO, Oregon (AP) -- The World Wide Wait may be over.
>>>      
>>>      Computer chip giant Intel on Monday announced a way for Internet
>>>      surfers to download images twice as fast over regular phone lines
>>>      without any special equipment or software -- but it will add about
>>>      $5 to monthly access fees.
>>>      
>>>      The technology called Quick Web is installed on the computers called
>>>      servers that Internet services use to store and relay data. The
>>>      combination of Intel hardware and special software compresses all
>>>      the graphic images that are piped through the server, boosting
>>>      access speed.
>>>      
>>>      "The more pictures on the screen, the faster it is," said Dave
>>>      Preston, Internet marketing manager for Intel.
>
>This sounds like a real interesting scam.  Graphic files on servers are
>already compressed.  Have they found some way to compress already
>compressed files?  And if it does not require special software at the
>client end, then they must be decompressing it before sending the file.
>
>Or maybe they just convert all the images to low quality jpegs.
>
>This has "Idea from Marketing" written all over it.

Maybe they dynamically turn off the modem compression feature at both ends during an image download.  LZW-like compression actually adds overhead to files which are non-text based.

--Steve