FWIW: I sent an e-mail to Nomai today and asked whether they have any plans to offer a SparQ compatible disk. It seems to me that because of its growing popularity and the expectation of 500K drive volume in six months, Nomai might be working on adding another knock-off cartridge to their current list of SyQuest compatible media offerings. I doubt I'll hear anything back from them, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.
Last September, Nomai acquired a 60,000 square foot, high volume floppy manufacturing plant from RPS Media for conversion over to Zip compatible XHD disk production. After announcing their US court victory over Iomega late last month, Nomai stated they were currently selling their XHD product in the United States and expects to have the product widely available in major retailers, distributors, and mail order companies this month. CompUSA is just one on a long list.
It will be interesting to see just how successful the XHD disks are and what impact they will have on Iomega. It's possible we might be getting a glimpse of the future for SparQ disks.
It appears to me that Nomai has nothing holding them back from going after SparQ like they did Zip. I know of no preventive agreements and Nomai seems to have little trouble getting around existing patents and trademarks.
I'd be interested in hearing any comments, opinions or information relating to this topic.
Regards - Dale
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