Thank you for your response. I store all the files on disk. During the startup I copy the files to the local computer as this is a "clien/server" application. I say that because the "server" is used as a "client" as well. We are a POS Company and the server is often used as a regular machine due to cost restraints. When you talk about loading the images at startup what do you mean. Unfortunately the containers are dynamic and they may have one image and be one color one second, and after a button is pressed, the same container may have to have a different image on it. So I can't read ahead and store the image on another container as it would still have to be set on the container. And there could be any where from one to five different sets of images used on the containers. If there is a way to load them on startup into memory that is exactly what I'm looking for. Our new systems are new Dell boxes with 64MB memory on them, so they should be able to take it.

Thank you in advance,

John Rowlinson
Microworks POS Solutions


>Just a thought...

>Could you do some kind of read-ahead?
>When you're on page 1 read in all the pictures for page 2 into memory.. I was >thinking about a timer which loads each image into a container which is off >the edge of the screen.. this should cache the images ready for when/if you >really need them.

>Or.. depending on how many images and how much ram you have you could load >every image once at the application startup

>You don't say how the images are stored.. are they a file on the disk? or in a >general field? if second option then the cache will struggle to find them >faster a second time (different file name,date & time)

>HTH

>I am attempting to find a way to speed up putting pictures on objects. We have a Point of Sale application that has a bunch of container objects on the screen that may or may not have images on them. While the image changes fairly quickly, when you have to do it up to 40 times every time a button is pressed it all starts to add up. Does anyone know of a way to push the images into memory to be accessed quicker. I know I can include them as part of my application, but the customer may have other images to use. I already copy the images locally to each station and check every time the application is started for new ones.
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
>John Rowlinson
>Microworks POS Solutions
Will Jones
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