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Technology Stocks : SYQUEST -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrBuzz who wrote (5567)	2/17/1998 3:07:00 AM
From: FuzzFace	Respond to of 7685

<Consider 10 Zip disks that go for $15 a piece. Thats $150 for 1 GB. And the drive costs around $149. Which is obviously a better buy? The Sparq 1 GB drive, of course.> Mr Buzz, Aw c'mon. Get your prices right. You can now get Zip disks for $8 apiece in packs of 6 if you shop. That's only $80 for 1GB. The drive you can get for $99 (again, you must shop for it, but it is out there). So the first GB is actually cheaper for Zip. After that, SparQ has the advantage, but it's not nearly as bad as you depict. How many GB of removable storage does joe sixpack need? And there are offsetting factors such as reliability (I am convinced Zip is more reliable than Sparq), longevity of the company (SYQT is doomed - 90% probablity) and the problem of putting all your eggs in one basket (the flip side is the inconvenience of swapping Zips for very large files). But surely, being able to share disks with 12M other Zip owners is worth something. How many SparQ owners can you share with? 100K? One or two people per stadium audience. Good luck finding them. After all is said and done, Zip is still looking mighty good. Whereas SparQ looks like a temporary fad. If in 1 year SparQ is still on the shelves, I'll be back here to eat a heaping helping of humble pie.

To: MrBuzz who wrote (5567)	2/17/1998 8:51:00 AM
From: Michael Coley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7685

RE: The Double-Edged Sword. Mr. Buzz, If consumers will choose SparQ because of price, what happens when Orb comes out (at less than half the price per meg)? - Michael Coley - wwol.com

To: MrBuzz who wrote (5567)	2/17/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: Cogito	Respond to of 7685

>>Frankly, I don't think the consumers have "gotten it" yet. The Sparq 1 GB drives are excellent. Why? Because the disks are so cheap. At my local store, I went through the aisles and saw the Sparq 1.0 disks selling for $39.95 for 1 GB cartridge. This is cheap. Consider 10 Zip disks that go for $15 a piece. Thats $150 for 1 GB. And the drive costs around $149. Which is obviously a better buy? The Sparq 1 GB drive, of course.<< MrBuzz- I don't disagree with you, for the most part. SparQ is a terrific product and I have said so many times. The thing that makes it a terrific product is not that it represents some sort of technological breakthrough, which it doesn't, but because the disks are cheap, just as you say. For the record, your Zip disk pricing is a bit high. You can get Zip disk 10-packs for $100, and Zip drives for the same amount, if you look around. Yes, that means that Zip's cost per megabyte is higher, but if you just want to send somebody 100MB or less worth of data, you don't want to spend 33 to 39 bucks for the cartridge to do it. And you don't want to send a cartridge they can't use, either. So you don't buy a SparQ drive if that's what you need removable storage for. The SparQ is not a better buy for all buyers. Yes, a lot of people will buy SparQ drives. SyQuest will sell as many as they can make, I'm sure. The real important questions for SYQT investors are 1, how many drives can SyQuest make, and 2, how much profit can they make per drive, including disks. - Allen