Version Twenty Four, Archive Comparison Table                  [15 May 1995]
                                                          [ACT\COMMENTS.TXT]


Here are my comments while creating this test:


AR        This program will not accept wildcards, so archiving a whole
          directory is not so easy.

ARI       Very slow.

ARJ       v2.42b (BETA_3 TEST release), no improvements in compression, or
          any real improvements in speed, just cosmetic changes, with some
          new features..

BSArc     I hope that I have used this program correctly, but the docs were
          in Russian.

CRUSH     Crush is not really an archiver, it's a bit like TAR, where is
          just stores all the files in one big file, and then lets another
          archiver do the work.  Looks like you don't have to use UUC.EXE &
          US.EXE now for UC2 useage with v1.8.

HA        Very slow.  But the latest beta version (v0.999b) is now even
          quicker when extracting.

IZIP386   This works much better and quicker if QEMM is not loaded.

JARCHIVE  Will not accept wildcards with directory paths.

LIMIT     v1.2, seems to be slightly quicker when compressing, but slower
          when extracting.

NULIB     This program will not accept wildcards, so archiving a whole
          directory is not so easy.

QUANTUM   Quantum really disagrees with QEMM, and would only work with QEMM
          unloaded.

RAR       This latest beta version, has slighly quicker extraction times,
          but the compression time is slightly slower.  For some reason the
          -s 'solid' switch has got worse, and is now not an advantage to
          use.

SAR       This does not like paths in the command line.

SQWEZ     This program now creates .SQZ files as well as self-extracting
          files.  Please note that this version of SQWEZ can have its
          compression level altered, but you are unable to change this from
          the command line.

UC        Latest BETA copy does have some minor compression improvements,
          and now seems to be slightly quicker to compress.  The new
          SuperOptimize options doesn't seem to give that much benefit for
          the time it takes, but make sure you compress with -tst before
          using the SuperOptimizer.

X1        Very good, keep an eye out for the final release, should knock the
          spots of the other archivers.

YAC       This beta copy is very good, it has excellent compression for a
          very good time tradeoff, can't wait for the final release!