Bearded One,
<Show me evidence that laptop manufacturers will change the size of their cases to fit the 98mm zip disk (a floppy *drive* is 96mm, so the Zip drive will have to be, what, 100 mm?)>
cnfinc.com
As you can see from the link above, there is no need to change anything to accomodate a swappable version of the ZIP drive for the world's three leading notebook manufacturers (i.e. Toshiba, IBM, CPQ). CNF has been working closely with these three vendors and IOM to introduce a ZIP drive for the notebook. I spoke with them last week and all testing is going well. They are suppose to be receiving production level drive motors from IOM in September and the drives should be commercially available by the end of September.
ZIP will then be the easiest and fastest way to move data between notebooks and desktops. Actually, I use an external ZIP on my notebook to transfer larege files between the notebook and my desktop (which has a built in SCSI ZIP) all the time. It is slightly inconventient, however, to have top get the external unit out and plug it in to the notebook each time. I can't wait until I can get an internal ZIP for my Toshiba Tecra's select bay.
As for the other uses. We have many ZIP drives at work (very large technology company). We use them when we have to take work home (which happens too frequently but is a reality of corporate America). It takes a long time to transfer 20Megs of Lotus files via the network over the phone line. ZIP has been a godsend for avoiding this.
I also use ZIP drives to transport large programs/files (almost everything is larger than 1.44 Meg these days) to PC's of friends and relatives all the time. You could do this over the internet but again with phone lines this is terribly slow.
My single biggest use of ZIP's, however, is digital photography. I need a place to store all the pictures and ZIP has proved to be the best choice. Cheap, fast, and mobile. I think ZIP will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the digital photography boom.
<Show me evidence that consumers will mail each other 15 dollar zips to pass around files.>
Zips are less than $15 and getting cheaper all the time. They will continue to drop in price as volume increases and production costs decrease. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see IOM introduce a 10Meg disk for a couple bucks to make passing disks around more appealing.
<I've not actually read anything here to believe that the Zips will become standard. >
I believe most if not all PII systems from DELL, Micron, and Gateway come standard with a ZIP drive. More and more OEM's are including this as a standard feature each month. In addition, every Kinko's in the country has ZIP drives now because they consider this the standard that people are using to bring in large files for printing. I have run accross two internet sites that sell stock photos and offered one of three formats; tape, CD-ROM, ZIP disk. I don't know what you consider a standard, but in my opinion with over 6 million drives installed and with support from almost every OEM, ZIP already is a standard.
I use ZIP's almost every day. I haven't used a floppy in over 6 months.
FF |
