I've been lurking around this thread now and then, when I have time to go through 40 posts in a day. Here are my thoughts on IOM and the thread:
Backward compatibility with the 3.5 floppy would be nice, especially for laptops. But I don't think the LS120 or HiFD is going to succeed. I think it'll be either Zips (see next comment, though) or CD-Rs.
The best thing IOM could do to make the Zip the next A: drive is put the design in the public domain. They don't make money on them anyway, and it's only chance is to have a fast, furious groundswell of support for the format. This won't happen as long as the design is proprietary. But since they make money on the disks, and only have one competitor for them, they could guarantee themselves income from the consumables for the next five years while they transition to the Jaz and Clik! formats for the bulk of their business.
The Clik! format is what's interesting about IOM, IMO. There's going to be a need for these things with all the PDAs, cameras, etc.
People who don't like Rocky should just ignore him. The only thing worse than an immature, obnoxious poster is someone who feels compelled to respond to him.
Re: takeover by Compaq: The acquisitions Compaq wants to make are related to networking, not storage. There's no need for Compaq to need to own IOM: they have an agreement to buy all they need, and IOM sells them at or below cost anyway.
Just my .02.
John |
