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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (43931)	1/19/1998 2:16:00 PM
From: Gary Wisdom	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Ken, interesting observations but . . . Clik! does not need to be embedded in the other products. So, I guess that's really not an issue, is it? Seriously, thank you for providing an intelligent argument here. It's appreciated and far too rare on the bear side.

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (43931)	1/19/1998 2:22:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Respond to of 58324

Ken, >No one here (except maybe Rocky) realizes the magnitude of the fatal flaw of the Clik: Power consumption.< Thanks for pointing that out. Please send e-mail to Iomega to warn them also. <g> GM

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (43931)	1/19/1998 2:29:00 PM
From: Teddy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

RE: "fatal flaw of the Clik: Power consumption." Ken, could you provide some numbers to go along with that statement? While it is obvious that Clik! uses more power than flash, the question is whether the amount is too much. i am not qualified to make that determination, but i would think that the engineers that designed the product took that into consideration. Thanks.

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (43931)	1/19/1998 2:35:00 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 58324

>>About cost/Mbyte: don't forget that the customer foots much of the bill in a flash card solution, BUT the manufacture foots much of the bill in a CLIK! based solution. (Since the drive needs to be embedded in the product). In other words, a flash card solution cost MUCH LESS to manufacture than a Clik! solution.<< Ken - Don't forget that any camera made with storage solution also has to come with a flash card, which adds to the cost and decreases the differential between manufacturing costs of that camera and one equipped with Clik! Manufacturers don't just look at the cost of making a device, however. They look at a cost/benefit analysis. If the customer is more likely to buy a slightly more expensive item that costs 50 to 75 bucks more, then the manufacturers will make that item. Power requirements for Clik! have been very carefully considered, and the current design is extremely efficient. Power consumption is only one consideration in making handheld devices. Again, the manufacturers want to build products that people will buy. - Allen

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (43931)	1/19/1998 3:50:00 PM
From: Brendan2012	Respond to of 58324

It remains to be seen what the actual power consumption is, though I believe Iomega made some comparison to a small christmas light (1 second on=1MB on Clik!?), which didn't seem like very much. Also, the real question is what portion of the device's total power consumption is Clik! using, not what the power consumption of Clik! is compared to flash. It could very well not have a significant on battery life. The manufacturer's gains from Clik!: More people will want to buy the product since the cost/MB of ownership is lower. I think this will outweigh the initial cost of the drive since even the first few MB of flash costs so much. Picture quality will be higher since less lossy compression must take place. Basically the manufacturers will support Clik! because it's what the consumers will want. Brendan

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (43931)	1/19/1998 4:46:00 PM
From: Joon Song	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 58324

>>>>>>>> No one here (except maybe Rocky) realizes the magnitude of the fatal flaw of the Clik: Power consumption. Typical flash cards draw about 10-20microamps. A floppy drive can draw 2000+ times that amount. Clik!, being a mechanical device, and following the laws of Physics, will have a difficult time (if not impossible) drawing less than 100x of flash cards. The most critical parameter for handheld devices IS power consumption. Total storage capacity and cost/Mbyte is much farther down on the list. (below mechanical robustness, weight, etc..) <<<<<<<< Power consumption is a problem in digital cameras, but you're looking in the wrong place for the power consumption. It's not the flash card or Clik! that's the big power drain - it's the LCD screen used to display the image and the pop of the light flash for taking indoor pictures that are the big power drains. Iomega has stated that power consumption for writing 1 meg to a Clik! disk to be comparable to lighting a Christmas light for 1 second. Ok, then how many Christmas lights is equivalent to a pop of the flash. I'm guessing quite a few. One or two pops of the flash is probably more than enough to power the writing of an entire Clik! disk. >>>>>>>> About cost/Mbyte: don't forget that the customer foots much of the bill in a flash card solution, BUT the manufacture foots much of the bill in a CLIK! based solution. (Since the drive needs to be embedded in the product). In other words, a flash card solution cost MUCH LESS to manufacture than a Clik! solution. <<<<<<<< Before I saying anything about this, will you agree with me that the future of digital camera require much higher resolution, sharper pictures? If you agree, let's use a 1 megpixel pictures as a baseline for digital cameras in the future (say next year). You say a flash card solution cost MUCH LESS to manufacture than a Clik! solution, but then which camera is better? Your 4 meg flash camera takes say 4 to 8 megapixel pictures. My Clik! takes as 40-80 pictures and many more if I buy more disks. Now is my Clik! camera worth the extra hundred dollars? Some people may say yes some people no. But I think most people buying digital cameras will say yes, because you're not going to be able to use the 4 to 8 picture flash camera the way you use a film camera today. What do you do when you've filled up your flash? Go back home to your PC? Sure you can go out and get a 32meg flash card. But then now you've spent more money than you would have if you bought a Clik! camera. >>>>>>>> So the question is: what is Click's value proposition for a product company? More cost, more support circuitry, higher power.. What does the manufacture gain? This is where I have the most problems.. <<<<<<<< Clik! will enable digital cameras to become a mainstream item. A Clik! camera will give you high quality pictures and you can use it like you use a film camera now. Flash is currently too expensive to put enough of it in a digital camera to take large numbers of high resolution pictures and will be for the forseeable future. Even when flash drops to $1 per meg in the next century, it will still be too expensive because camera resolution will continue to increase, and the price of Clik! will also decrease while increasing capacity. Joon