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

To: Rocky Reid who wrote (4303)	11/17/1998 10:16:00 PM
From: Herb Fuller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

Re:>>> Super Floppy-Disk Vendors Throw Down Gauntlet <<< (11/17/98, 3:32 p.m. ET) By Joseph F. Kovar, Computer Reseller News LAS VEGAS -- The super floppy-disk war is coming down to a race between a market leader with a proprietary solution and several others who offer compatibility with legacy floppy disks. Iomega has bulked up its Zip drives by introducing a 250-megabyte version at Comdex/Fall '98 Monday. At the same time, Sony Electronics' Component Co. and Teac America threw their hats into the super-floppy arena by introducing HiFD 200-MB drives at Comdex Monday. Iomega, in Roy, Utah, publicly unveiled on Monday the Zip 250, an extension of the company's flagship 100-MB Zip-drive series. The Zip 250 uses the company's new 250-MB Zip disks, and it is read and write compatible with current 100-Mbyte disks. External Zip 250 drives with parallel and SCSI interfaces are expected to ship by the end of the year, said Ted Briscoe, president of Iomega's Zip-product division. Initial shipments will go to the commercial distribution and retail channels. An internal version with ATAPI interface for OEMs will follow. The estimated retail price of the drive is $199, which includes one 250-MB disk, IomegaWare software, Norton Rescue PC recovery software from Symantec, and a voice and music record/playback utility. Extra 250-MB Zip disks are priced as low as $16.65 each in lots of six. The data-storage division of Teac America, in Montebello, Calif., will begin shipping its new external HiFD 200-MB floppy disk- drive kit next February, said Scott Elrich, Teac's product development and marketing manager. Similar drives previously were unveiled by the value-added products division of Sony Electronics' Component Co., in San Jose, Calif. The company has not revealed pricing. In addition to reading from and writing to 200-MB floppy disks, the new drives from both Sony and Teac maintain backward compatibility with standard 1.44-MB floppies. Teac said it plans to produce three different versions of the HiFD drives, including external and internal IDE drives, as well as a half-inch-high version for use with notebook PCs. List prices for the drives are about $199. Teac's announcement follows last week's introduction of the Pro-FD by Samsung Electro-Mechanics, in San Jose, Calif. The Pro-FD is a 123-MB floppy-disk drive that offers read/write backward compatibility with legacy 1.44-MB and 720-kilobyte media. The Pro-FD offers data-transfer rates of 5 MB per second and has a 128-KB data buffer. However, the Pro-FD is not expected to be available until the third quarter of next year. Iomega's Briscoe said 1.44-MB floppy compatibility is not a concern to his company. "Almost all PCs sold today ship with [1.44-MB] floppy-disk drives," he said. "Sony's HiFD drives are external at first, so why does someone need backward compatibility?" techweb.com If your not the lead dog the scenery never changes . Herb

To: Rocky Reid who wrote (4303)	11/17/1998 11:38:00 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

>>NEC has a LICENSE to make and market the USB version of Vapor!. But it will not be built into ANYTHING. No OEM in this case, sorry.<< Elaine - Unfortunately, on this thread and many others, the term is often misused. The initials stand for Original Equipment Manufacturer. When one company manufactures a product which is then sold by another, under the second company's brand name, the first company is referred to as the OEM. The agreement by the second company to do this is called an OEM agreement. When Iomega sells Zip drives to Dell, say, for installation in Dell computers, that isn't really an OEM arrangement in the original definition of the term, since the Zip drive still bears the Iomega brand. IBM is one of the few companies which actually has an OEM agreement with Iomega. They sell computers with Zip drives which are IBM branded, even though Iomega makes the drives. NEC has signed a licensing agreement to manufacture USB Clik! drives. That isn't an OEM agreement, since NEC will make the drives themselves. How is the distinction actually important? What's important is that this is more than just a statement of support for Clik! by NEC. They're putting up the hard earned, which is something you keep saying no company will do or has done for Clik! In fact, NEC's decision to invest in manufacturing facilities for Clik! is a greater indication of commitment than merely buying the drives and reselling them. There is no point in being childish about it, Elaine. Zip was introduced as an add-on product first, and was built into products later. That's how it will be for Clik! no matter how many times you post your predictions to the contrary. - Allen