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

To: Michael Coley who wrote (5732)	3/1/1998 4:03:00 PM
From: Fred Mah	Respond to of 7685

The question is, of course, what percent of the number of units sold do exhibit problems. Since more Syquest buyers are "tech" types it could be anticipated that a large percent do use the internet newsgroups, and this could outweigh the number of Iomega users that might post in newsgroups (percentage-wise). You can go to various newsgroups and they are talking about products 90% of typical computer users have never heard about, but it makes it seem like everyone knows about it. However, the quality control and shipping damage problems are obviously a negative for the product introduction.

To: Michael Coley who wrote (5732)	3/1/1998 4:41:00 PM
From: Robert E. Bruss	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7685

>>SparQ has a VERY small installed base of under 100,000 drives and >>has only been on the market for 3 months. To see such a large >>number of messages on Usenet about problems this soon is a bad sign. Were you following the Iomega threads after the Zip was introduced? I wasn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if the story was similar. It takes time for new products, knowledge of them, and familiarity with them to become widespread enough to avoid turning what would otherwise be trivial issues into public complaining. I had a minor glitch when installing the Sparq; fortunately I'd been doing this long enough to be able to track it down quickly (had to add a line to system.ini that wasn't specified in the installation instructions). I've seen a number of complaints in one ng that were solved by just that - add a line to system.ini and off you go. None of those people with the problem ever come back to say things are resolved and everything's just fine, thank you. All you ever hear about is the initial problem, and perhaps you hear about it several times over the course of a week or two before the guy finds someone with the answer. >>In contrast, Zip has an installed base of over 12,000,000 drives >>and has been on the market for almost 3 years. There are quite a >>few messages on Usenet about problems with Zip, but FAR less (as a >>percent of installed base) than SparQ. I guess we interpret things differently. Maybe I'm biased, but my general impression of what I read in the media and ng's concerning the Sparq has been overall positive. Lately I've been hearing more and more "click of death" and other negatively slanted stories about the Zip and Iomega. Maybe people are just tired of Iomega and are rooting for the underdog Syquest. Whatever it is, most of what I've been reading lately paints Syquest's products in a good light and Iomega's in a less favorable one.

To: Michael Coley who wrote (5732)	3/1/1998 7:05:00 PM
From: Dale Stempson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7685

Re: Nomai Follow-Up I snipped the following old news from this recent c/net article: news.com __________ The French company has started the nurturing process, however, by building up its distribution through a legal settlement with SyQuest. Nomai had been charged with patent, copyright, and trademark infringement. The dispute was settled last October, clearing the way for the company to build up its brand in the United States. Under the terms of the settlement, Nomai was granted a royalty-bearing license to produce 3-inch and 5-inch replacement cartridges for SyQuest removable disk drives. The companies also entered a cross-licensing arrangement, and Nomai will begin to sell SyQuest products on a private-label basis. Before the settlement, however, Syquest was forced to restructure its pricing so that it could make some revenue on the drives in addition to the profits it was making on cartridges. New competition in the profit-bearing part of the company's revenues cut into earnings--a fate that soon may befall Iomega, whose pricing structure is very similar to Syquest's before the settlement. __________ Does anyone happen to know if Nomai will be making SparQ disks? and how many disks are they currently selling for Syquest products? Regards - Dale

To: Michael Coley who wrote (5732)	3/1/1998 9:13:00 PM
From: MoonBrother	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7685

Michael, You start to sound more and more desperate to me. You used to be able to put some reasonable numbers together when you try to say something, and putting yourself in a right position, an amateur investor. Now you start to drive yourself into a mad-ness and sound more and more like you need someone's help to cool you down a little bit. Here are some examples, a) in your note #5722, you said "2) "Improved manufacturing dramatically"? That's the first I've heard of it." You are trying to compare yourself with the Storage Analyst of an industry authority Dataquest. You think that you are the storage expert that should have heard everything about SyQuest. Com'on. Take a cold bath and wake up!. b) in your note #5724, you said "It's true that there have been very few shipped (I'm guessing less than 100,000 to date) in the three months since SparQ was introduced." Are you trying to fool yourself? You know that by early Feb. SyQuest has already shipped more than 80,000 units. Now another month later they only shipped another 20,000? You must have read one Yahoo poster's message about using serial number to guess the shipping amount to date. The latest number he saw was 126,000. You know that's a much closer number. c) you are using two obscured information to support your opinion. One is that Washington Post's "Science and Government Policy" editor's SparQ/Jaz comparison article (weird match). The other one, even more obscure, is the messages from alt.syquest. Who are those posting stuff on alt.something? I thought that's the place for people to sell their pictures... Seriously, Michael, listen to me, this advise is for you (I want to emphasize it for you, therefore using uppercase) BE RESPONSABLE TO YOURSELF! IF YOU HAVE SHORTED SYQT, TRY TO BUY BACK IT FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING! YOU MAY STILL BE ABLE TO GET IT BELOW $3. IF YOU HAVN'T SHORTED SYQT, BUT THINKING OF DOING IT, DON'T!!! YOU'RE GONNA BE BURNED! THE REASON IS SIMPLE, SYQT HAS NO UPSIDE LIMIT AT THIS POINT!!! Good luck on your IOM!