Brian -
Re: Sony Drive vs. Iomega's continuing health
I don't think Staples salesmen are necessarily the very most knowledgable where PCs are concerned. But the fact that this guy know about the Sony drive makes me think that either a) he actually reads the trade press or b) Sony has done some serious promotion that I'm not aware of.
In any case, I would not say that it's impossible for Sony's HiFD drive to become the new standard. But it is certainly still a matter of speculation only. Your Staples salesman is unlikely to have inside information on this.
So far, there are NO PC manufacturers who have committed to supporting the Sony/Fuji drive, whereas ALL of the top 10 PC manufacturers include Zip in at least some models, and one of them, Micron, has taken the next step by committing to configure ALL of their Millennia systems with the Zip as drive A:.
The backwards compatibility issue has been dealt with again and again. If backwards compatibility was the most compelling issue, then the LS-120 wouldn't be such a gigantic flop, and the Zip would not have sold more than 10 million in such a short time.
Something Ken Pomeranski said on the subject of the 1.44MB floppy really impressed me. He said that there isn't going to be a single replacement for it; it has already been replaced by several different things. I believe he is correct in this.
CD-ROMs have replaced floppy for the software-delivery function, for all but the smallest programs. Certainly almost nobody uses floppies for backups anymore. They use tape, MO, and various magnetic removable media. For sharing files which take up more space than 1.44MB, when there's a network connection available, people use that, and millions of them use Zips when there's no net.
Where does this leave the floppy? Well, apparently AOL still needs them.
Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe the Zip will die out as quickly as it sprang to life. But I'm not betting that way. I also happen to think that Clik has quite a bit of potential and that Jaz is not dead yet.
Invest your money wherever you want, Brian. I'm staying long in Iomega.
- Allen |
