You should check out the Kakadu JPEG 2000 software. It's really fast.
The summary of one of their time tests, which sounds in line with our observed results:
'"There is an example on the spreadsheet involving a 13.3K x 13.3K RGB image (531 MBytes), being compressed to 2 bits/pixel, at 0.145 pictures/second, using the speedpack on a standard 2.4 GB core-2 duo machine. From this, it can be inferred that compressing 60 MB down to 5 MB (12:1 is 2 bits/pixel for RGB, although colour properties were not specified in the original request) should occur at a rate of 1.2 pictures/second. Compressing to the slightly lower target size of 4 MB will be a little bit faster."
http://www.kakadusoftware.com/