Dale,
Thank you for the information about the share calculation. I am not an expert in these things and was not sure which sort of shares have to be taken into consideration for the EPS.
It is interesting how low the prices for zips are in the states, because in europe they are getting more and more expensive. The average selling price for a zip is around 200$ and one cartridge is around 15$ (in Germany). Whereas the Syquest products are selling at similar prices as in the States, nevertheless you have to search for them, because you won't find it in regular stores ( you have to use mail orders), - iomegas drives can be found everywhere.
Again the Zip.
I am convinced the ZIP has no long future, because for several reasons:
1. It is still too expensive to be a real substitute for the old floppy.
2. Cartridges are too expensive and will be still too expensive if they drop to 3$. No companies will distribute driver software on zip cartridges. They do it on CD-roms (cd-roms are the real substitutes for the floppy), because a cd-rom cost only some cents and you find them in every magazine. When there are good DVD drives out at lower prices they will replace the floppies.
3. The zip cartridges have already too less capacity. 100 MB are too small to transport large programs and videos. A normal floppy still has enough capacity to transport ordinary text files.
4. If you have no drive and you have the possibiliy to buy a 100 MB drive for 99$ and a 1GB for 199$ which you can use as an ordinary harddrive, what would you do ? Even if you possess already 50 Zip cartridges you would buy the 1GB drive and copy (borrowing a zip from a friend) all zips to five 1GB cartridges. Imagine you have both drives, which drive would you use? Whenever possible you would use the 1GB drive.
Whenever I want to share files with friends I send them via email or write a CD-Rom for larger files, but never would use a zip cartridge, because they are too expensive to give them away.
5. The "cheap" price for a technology can have two consequences:
a) you buy it easier
B) you drop it easier
regards
Ralph |
