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

To: Milt Best who wrote (6420)	5/17/1998 10:57:00 PM
From: Moe B. Loney	Respond to of 7685

Yes, thank you for reminding me, I almost forgot. "If Ez135 and EZ230 are 5% of revenues, how big a hole can RMA's related to those products be?" Those two models may be less than 10 percent of revenues at this time but they were a very large portion of revenues when they were new. I am still sending back EZ 135's and they have been discontinued for about 18 months I think. Some of the returns include previous RMA replacements. The 230's are not as bad as the 135's but also have problems. The 135 and 230 may only account for 5% of the revenues at this time because they are not sold as much but their failure rate is much higher than any industry standard as far as I can tell. The MTBF* is a deceiving number. The point here is that the inside of a Syquest drive is very weak and is cause for concern. "Do you think its possible to make improvements to the SAME technology?" Of course it is and that is why the 230 has fewer problems that the 135. The 135 had many problems with the cartridge getting stuck in the drive and sometimes the unlock lever could not be moved out of the locked position. The 230 was an improvement in this area and the hinged door cover was much better since it allowed less dust and dirt contamination inside the drive. But the read/write head was just as delicate and I could not see any improvement in that area. Did the SyJet or SparQ rework this mechanism. Not as far as I can see. I have not used them in large quantity and won't with the current problems I see with Syquest. This is also why the original founder of Syquest, and now working as Castlewood, has decided to try a newer and different technology on the "Orb". Will it be better? I don't know. It will be an interesting product if it does perform well. "Did you see the latest press from SYQT? ISO9002... Quality..." They do not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. They rank up their with their MTBF* number. "Do you think SYQT management would hang the future of their company on a product that has a failure rate similar to what you have stated?" Do they have a choice? They sell what they make. They knew that they were shipping DOA products. There is no way that I could have had as many as I did and them not know what was happening. I feel that they needed cash flow and knew that they had a major quality problem but chose to ship and deal with the RMAs at a later date. You can choose to not believe any of what I am saying and that is fine. It makes no difference to me. My statements are as true as I can make them. Syquest has a problem and I know it. The people that read the quarterly reports should be able to see that Syquest is in trouble. If you choose to believe that there is no reason for Syquest to be having problems and that this is all just MM manipulation then I wish you luck. You will need it. Moe * storage.ibm.com