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

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (51010)	3/23/1998 10:22:00 PM
From: jmj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Dear SR, Don't know if it means that the advertising blitz is helping or not, but the local Walmart has started carrying two packs of Zip disks... Small college town, but no Zip disks at Walmart here until this month... For what it's worth, JMJ

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (51010)	3/23/1998 10:35:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 58324

Interesting article in tomorrows IBD: Today's Memories Going Digital Tomorrow? Date: 3/24/98 Author: Matt Krantz Will proud grandmothers and blushing brides one day reach for the computer mouse instead of the photo album torelive happy memories? That's not likely to happen soon. But the advent of digital cameras is expected to give consumers a choice between conventional and electronic photography. Digital cameras let you bypass photo developers by taking floppy disk-based ''film'' and plugging it into a personal computer. And the Internet will help you share photos with family members. Ultimately, that means computers may become the means by which you display, track and preserve some of your photos in the future - if you find the benefits of digital photography outweigh the drawbacks. ''There are 150 billion photos in shoe boxes around the world,'' said Jim Hollingsworth, vice president of marketing for Sony Corp.'s multimedia products unit. ''After a house burns down, people always say the things they miss most are the photos they lost.'' But making and preserving these electronic memories will cost you. First, there's the expense of a digital camera. It can set you back $200 to $800; a conventional camera can cost as little as $50. If you're turned off by the price of a digital camera, then you can have a photo developer make computer disks from regular film. The cost is $10 for 24 prints. You also can purchase a scanner to electronically reproduce and store conventional prints. Consumer scanners cost $100 to $200. One key advantage of digital photography is that once photos are put into computer form, they can be safeguarded from the elements. One method is to send them over the Internet to an electronic photo vault. Some online services also safeguard photos. But they're not cheap. Eastman Kodak Co.'s Picture Network charges $5 a month to store 100 photos on its protected servers. For saving photos from age and disaster, digital photography beats albums. A carefully stored photograph can last 80 years - nearly twice the life of a computer disk - but digital photos can be duplicated over and over again for free. And most people won't see the difference between a photo and a computer printout. The new 5700 Color Jetprinter from Lexmark International Group Inc., priced at $249, can print photos with 38% higher resolution than most similarly priced color inkjet printers, the company says. Like the 5700, the Stylus Color 600 printer from Epson America Inc. ($249), has an ink cartridge with two colors most cartridges don't have: light cyan and light magenta. These colors smooth out the grainy appearance of older color inkjet printers. There's a catch, though. For best results, both printers must be loaded with expensive ''photo stock'' paper. Much like the special paper used to print pictures, photo stock is especially thick and nonporous to give the computer prints a glossy look. Lexmark's photo stock paper costs $12.50 for 20 8 1/2- by-11 sheets. And the color ink cartridges can cost more than $40. That means it costs up to 80 cents to print a 4-by-6-inch photo using a PC and color printer, says Nicolas Van Den Berghe, president and chief executive of LivePix Co., a software maker in San Francisco. Standard processing averages 40 cents a print. But software can help organize photos. One of the easiest programs to use, Mountain View, Calif.- based Storm Technologies Inc.'s EasyPhoto, lets users sort pictures into subject groupings. It also displays thumbnail-size photos in a group for quick access. The software, which comes bundled with most of Storm's photo scanners and also with Adobe Systems Inc.'s PhotoDeluxe 2.0 photo editing software, also lets users enter a text description of photos. Both the PhotoDeluxe 2.0 and LivePix 2.0 Deluxe photo editing programs let users lay out photos on a simulated album page and then print out the page. LivePix plans to issue digital photo album software by May that will let users upload ''pages'' to the Web and also record verbal descriptions of photos. For users who just want to sort and catalog photos, not edit them, ACDSee32 from Canada's ACD Systems Ltd. may be helpful. It uses a Windows 95-like interface to visually group and view thumbnail-size photos. Since it's geared for just sorting and viewing, ACD's program is faster than other software that has photo imaging tools. It can be bought over the Internet for $30 from ACD's Web site. Both EasyPhoto and ACDSee32, teamed with a special PC video card, can make viewing photos more of a family affair. With STB Systems Inc.'s $199 Velocity 128 video card, PCs can display photos on TV screens. investors.com