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

To: David S. who wrote (44232)	1/21/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: Brendan2012	Respond to of 58324

Supposedly the Sony's heads will ride above the disk when using a 200MB disk, at least that's my interpretation of "dual discrete head gap." Sounds expensive to me. Good point on the failure rate of floppies and the problem with heads contacting the surface, of course. I'm posting way too much today. Brendan

To: David S. who wrote (44232)	1/21/1998 7:26:00 PM
From: Dale Stempson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Re: Sony HiFD David, I don't believe that Sony can come out with their drive at a cost in line with that of a Zip and a floppy combined. Besides, we're talking about the future here, who knows what the Zip will cost 6 months from now. Zip costs will continue dropping for a host of reasons, most notably, due to the benefits of increased volume manufacturing. BTW, how many are going to buy a HiFD external drive? I can't think of anyone who needs a backwards compatible external unit. The only reason to have one would be if there was a need for compatibility. It took Iomega quite some time to sell enough external Zips to create the demand for OEMs to include the drive in their boxes. Now here comes Sony, and they're going to convince these same folks that regardless of the lack of demand, their product is going to sell better than the Zip, and the LS-120 provides no indication of the real need for such a product. The check's in the mail... Regards - Dale

To: David S. who wrote (44232)	1/22/1998 8:19:00 AM
From: Dwight Griffin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

HiFD news on the Cirrus Logic (CRUS) 3rd Q report. " Cirrus Logic's advanced read channel chip is designed into a new high-density floppy drive jointly developed by Sony Corporation [NYSE:SNE - news] and Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. Recognized by Byte Magazine as one of the top products at COMDEX, this next-generation drive enables 3.5-inch floppy disks to store 200 MB capacity, while specifying 3.6 MB/sec transfer rate and backward read/write compatibility with current 1.44 MB floppy disks. Sony expects to bring this product to market in the second half of 1998." biz.yahoo.com I thought they had been touting 2nd Quarter! Dwight Griffin

To: David S. who wrote (44232)	1/22/1998 10:55:00 AM
From: AreWeThereYet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 58324

David, Re: "HiFD ride on the media as well" You have a good point, unfortunately it also show that you don't have much technical sense. Riding the magnetic media which spin at 3600rpm is almost impossible and expensive to achieve. According to Sony/Fuji, HiFD use what they called "Soft load" which "Float" above the media just like Zip. It is basically a HDD which use soft thin film instead the metal platter. It operates much like a HDD, in fact it use PRML too. HiFD is more like the Zip than the floppy. I guess IOM has made a mistake when they chose to develope Zip with a different physical form factor than floppy (this is a one-way street) but again they might have no choice because they want to achieve 100MB limit at that time. In addition they might never aware that Zip will be such a gigantic success, anyway IOM done a very great job. Right product at the right time. Now the question is will it continue the success, chance is fifty fifty. Even if it fail to kill HiFD, it is still a great company. Clik can be valuable product if flash memory price remains high (ask AMD), again the chance is fifty fifty :o) aC