Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: jhild who wrote (54204)	5/6/1998 12:39:00 PM
From: sheila rothstein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Jhild, thanks for the explanations. Hope Clik! has done the Beta testing and worked out the bugs if any exist. SR

To: jhild who wrote (54204)	5/6/1998 2:02:00 PM
From: Daniel P. Dwyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Has anyone seen the latest issue of USNEWS? On page 66 they have an article entitled "Closet space for the PC. Sparq 2 is cheaper and easier to use than Zip drives or CD-RWs. They compare the pros and cons of Zip, Sparq, Imation Superdisk, HP CD writer, Jaz and Sony's HiFD. Although HiFD is not available yet, the article goes on to praise Sony's offering: "Still it looks as though HiFD will be worth the wait. Although they are expensive by the penny, HiFD disks may be comparitively cheap by the pound, a potential 10 cents per meg (vs 17 cents for Zip and 9 cents for Jaz) versus 14 cens for the SuperDisk. Second, Sony invented the omnipresent 3.5 inch floppy, and with its considerable power in the industry, its a good bet taht the company can establish HiFD as the next floppy standard. THird, its performance claims look pretty impressive. USNEWS was the first magazine to see HiFD in action, and while the early units were sstill buggy, we watched short videos running off them and quality was acceptable. (When more-evolved drives arrive, we'll be able to see whether you an actually run games or toehr applications from HiFD.) Does anyone care to comment? (other than Reid, of course.). BTW, I am long IOM and believe the company stands a good chance to be the floppy replacement because of quality and market penetration and user familiarity. Dan Dwyer

To: jhild who wrote (54204)	5/7/1998 4:30:00 PM
From: FruJu	Respond to of 58324

Here's the terms as used by many computer software companies: 1. Development versions, e.g. 8.0d1 These are versions which are for internal use by the company only. Features are still being requested/added as the development goes on. Will generally crash every few minutes. 2. Alpha versions, e.g. 8.0a1 Feature set 95% or so complete. Released to very important developers. Still has lots of bugs, but should be stable enough to develop software for... 3. Beta versions, e.g. 8.0b1 Feature set complete (i.e. no new features can be added once it enters beta). May still be some small features left to implement, but most of the time is concentrated on fixing bugs. Beta versions are fairly widely released to developers (who help to find the bugs). 4. Final Candidate, e.g. 8.0fc1 All show-stopping bugs fixed (e.g. complete crashes). Still probably minor bugs lurking, but not significant enough to prevent a full release (no software company releases a bug-free product these days). Developers (and possibly some end-users) pound on the product to try and find any more major bugs. 5. Golden Master, e.g. 8.0gm Code is released to manufacturing for CD-ROM pressing. Step 1 may go through 20-50 cycles, steps 2 and 3 usually about 10-20 cycles, step 4 possibly 2-3, and step 5 is of course the final. E>