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

To: Ken Pomaranski who wrote (9590)	5/2/1999 10:57:00 PM
From: FuzzFace	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

Have we downplayed a 1% failure rate - yes. Have we discounted COD as bearish ravings - no. Allen has always claimed about 1% failure for Zip, so your use of him is wrong-headed. 1% is industry norm, if I'm not mistaken. Zip failure rate is not worse than average, rather, from what I have read, it is somewhat better. Not much, but somewhat. That you won't acknowledge positive things like this, but rather prefer to put a negative spin on anything IOM related makes you guilty of "bearish ravings." Your constant bearish ravings has lowered, and continues to lower your credibility. I hope I cleared that up for you. But your main point seems to be where the 1% is coming from. This seems valid at first take, but I believe is really just another specious bear argument. From the user viewpoint, if my drive clicks, burps, grinds or screams to death, or just plain stops dead one day, I still have a dead drive. Thus as a user, I am more concerned with the total failure rate than any specific cause, or combination of causes. And I can only imagine what you would say if Zip failed for 10 different reasons, but still at an aggragate rate of 1%. Would it go like this? Zip design is so flawed that failure occurs not at one weak link, but at many. There is not just one cheap part, but several. The overall low reliability in a 4 year old product simply proves Iomega is a third rate company. Now, concerning your statement: It's difficult to imagine someone putting mission critical data on these things if the possiblity is out there. "The possibility"? What a foolishly worded sentence. Perhaps you missed the point I made earlier. Let me be explicit. Every piece of mission critical data currently resides on drives that fail about at the same rate as Zip. (Some are better, some are worse, but Zip is right in the middle, somewhat on the good side of the median.) Prudent people back up their data. Then when the inevitable failure occurs, prudent people are not SOL. Period. End of story. Sorry to disappoint you Ken, but I don't believe all the Bull arguments, any more than I believe all of your (small-b) bull. True, bears have been much more often correct about the stock price direction than the bulls during the 3 years I've watched IOM. This is a function of 1) poor execution by Iomega management, and, 2) the 1996 short squeeze/speculative bubble. But it should go without saying that guessing (and that's all it really is, for either of us) right about the stock direction for a few years doesn't make one automatically right about anything you please. You have yet to make your case against Zip. Ranting about COD when the failure rate doesn't exceed industry norms hardly does the job. Your credibility suffered even more when you insinuated otherwise. And if I recall correctly, your commentary remained bearish during the entire spring-to-fall 1997 runup, though you jumped in and out on the long side occasionally, purely as a mo-mo play, dissing IOM all the way.