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Non-Tech : Iomega Thread without Iomega -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Colvin who wrote (2347)	10/18/1998 9:55:00 PM
From: AreWeThereYet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

David, the first post by Iss (about CDR, DVD, VHS, LD...) is a total confusion and I don't want to spend time to comment/react to it. His second post has some good pts but the weakness of Zip is not its size. For those who is new here, let me repeat again. The weakness of Zip is lack of a lowcost media or backward compatibility to make it a true floppy replacement. This doesn't mean Zip cannot be success, in fact all Zip, LS-120 and HiFD can be the winner. It just take more time for Zip to success because it need a longer transition period. Floppy remains the ideal media to distribute small programs, data, patches and updates. This has changed gradually when more and more PCs have net access one way or the other but the date is not 1998 nor 1999 for sure. This occur when you see major PC box maker sell PC without floppy. HiFD is kind of late but it still has great chance to success because of its inherit advantages over Zip. (Honestly, I like HiFD and LS-120 over Zip) BTW, it doesn't take 2 months for OEM qualification, this is simply BS. Do you have to wait 2 mos to certified Xeon? How about TNT? This is only my opinion: about the stock, sell it if it reach $4.50. It still has lots of uncertainty. Orb will come eventually and it will hurt Jaz revenue even further. HiFD will give more price pressure to Zip and that translate to lower margin. It won't take IOM lots of effort to return to a profitable company but I don't see this happen yet. aC

To: David Colvin who wrote (2347)	10/18/1998 11:40:00 PM
From: Craig Richards	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10072

My thoughts on the next steps needed for Iomega to increase Zip penetration: I think Sierk and the team are doing a great job in cutting costs, which is a pre-requisite for Iomega to be able to survive with the OEM-centric sales model that's occurring. However, I think more than just cost cutting is needed. Ken P has made a very good point that it will be hard to sell low-priced PCs with both a Zip and a floppy drive. IMO, the Zip has to replace the floppy in order to be included in a majority of low priced PCs. In order for this to happen, the Zip has to be included in PCs as the A: drive. Another aspect of this, is that it should be possible to format a Zip disk via the operating system that includes a complete version of the operating system on it. Remember when you could format a floppy disk with a copy of DOS on it to use as a back up boot disk? This is what users should be able to do through Windows with a Zip disk. Iomega should be working with Microsoft to get this functionality into the next patch release of Windows 98. I think these 2 things (A: drive plus full system boot) would encourage PC dealers to sell PCs with only Zip drives. Iomega needs to start working with Microsoft immediately to enable this functionality, they also need to offer incentives to their PC OEMs to sell Zip drives as a bootable drive instead of the E: or G: drive that it currently is.