Yeah, they HAVE to realize there are tons more 100MB Zips out there than 250MB ones!
Personally, I dig Zip disks. I've had a 100MB USB Zip Drive since I've had my first iMac (February 2000), and had a SCSI model before that one that I used with my Quadra 610.
I certainly don't use them for longterm archiving/storage (I'm not crazy!), but - IMO - there's nothing quicker and easier to use for shuttling or transporting files.
Granted, unlike many of you, I'm not doing super-duper high-res Photoshop stuff. Nor am I working in video or other space-hogging mediums.
But to throw some Illustrator stuff on, a few mp3s, some writings, a couple of downloaded utilities/shareware, a Quicken data file, fonts, etc., I'd MUCH rather copy it to a Zip disk, go where I'm going, copy it to the other machine and be done with it.
I'm not going to sit and waste time burning (and wasting) a CD for 28MB worth of stuff!
I do think this new (750MB) model is going to flop. Nobody really cares, things have moved on. As a matter of fact, most everything Iomega has done SINCE the original 100MB Zip drive has been a wash-out.
I think they could, as a company, get really small and tight and simply do what they do (did?) best: go back and just do the 100MB Zips.
Great for students, consumers, beginners, writers, shuttling stuff to work and back, etc.
100MB is a nice, large enough and even number. Besides, those are the drives that are out there in the largest numbers.
Just put all their energy/focus into making them faster, more reliable (eliminate that "click of death" syndrome), more affordable and compatible with all platforms and interfaces and OS's.
Everyone I know still uses - and likes - little 100MB Zip disks. They're just simple and hassle-free to use.
I can throw 40MB or so on one and be out the door in less time than it would take me to burn a CD of that amount (plus, when I get where I'm going, if I want to put OTHER stuff on that CD, I can't).
Zips are cool for what they are. And if you use them for the right purposes.
I've got an LCD SuperDrive iMac. The CD-R on it is 8x. It writes CD-RW at 4x.
I honestly spend more time waiting for the blank disc to get initialized or whatever then for it to burn THEN for the verification, etc. than I would to just throw in on a Zip.
It's a case-by-case basis, and I often DO burn things to CD for transport. But if it's under 80MBs, I usually just grab one of my 8 100MB Zip disks and fling it all on there. While it's copying, I go pee or grab a soda or something.
Just a personal preference, that's all. No big deal.
Although, everywhere that I go in my Mac-using life, I have a Zip drive there, waiting for me. I don't have (in most cases) a CD-R, so...
Bringing stuff BACK with me gets tough without a Zip. That's another big reason.
I've got a 24x slapped in my tower, on top of an USELESS zip drive, jesus i wish it was another full drive bay so i could put my cdrom back in... guess i need a new tower
i used zips when they were only 100mb, they we're great then. i had a 250mb hard drive in my 6100/60- i stored all my mp3's on the zip and played them through MacAMP... sweetness. the problem with zips is that not everyone has them... i end up burning or just emailing stuff for people... my friends have cable and so do i so for most stuff i just ftp it...
there are so many less expensive options to zip that the utility of it is kind of lost in the price
It's not so cheap to throw CDs away in Canada. The Feds slapped a levy on all recording media to compensate Canadian music artists for losses due to piracy. It's ridiculous twice over: by far, most discs are used for business purposes and/or storing one's own intellectual property, and not a cent of the money collected in two and a half years has been paid to any intellectual property owner.
It's not a huge levy per disc, but it really adds up. On a cheap disc it can double the price.
That said, if you feel bad throwing things away, don't CD-RWs work? Are other people having trouble erasing those with which I'm not familiar? They are supposed to work dozens of times, no? I've never hit the limit before losing or lending the disc... Of course the speed problem is compounded, but the fastest write is one you don't have to do a second time when you find out you need the file again on a computer without a Zip drive.
I'm no zealot either way. I've just purchased several of these alternative drives over and never have I known when writing a file that the recipient also had one. It's such a long shot I never think to ask. Therefore, no chance to use them. About a grand wasted over ten years. I always know a CD will be there, and I've only had two problems with CD-RWs not reading.
Of course, I'm given to understand that conditions are right in the closets of professional graphics designers for these drives to actually copulate and spawn young, and we all know that educational institutions are self-contained equipment universes that significantly affect the perceptions of those contained therein. I may very well not be on the same planet as you.
Mine seem to work. Yeah, my bad, about the sessions, but you can still close the session without closing the CD.
It seems like 100Mb discs are cool if you got 'em from way back when CD burning was neither fast nor cheap, so as pscates pointed out, why not keep using them. But I don't think I would look to keep updating the technology.
It's really a shame that manufacturers couldn't agree on ONE flash memory format. We'd have had some kind of flash slot in all computers by now, and it would have been ideal. You buy the amount of storage you need and it all works in the same slot whether it's 8MB or 8GB.
Oh well, maybe USB thumb-drives will supercede most of our writeable personal information transport needs. I've read that there are driverless USB thumb-drives out there. Do they work? This would be ideal in a multi-platform application. Heck, even in a single platform, you never know if the computer you're going to has appropriate drivers.
If driverless thumb-drives are not really 'driverless' but rather some sort of marketing spin, then such support would seem to be a good thing to build into USB via firmware. A firmware update spec that makes all USB devices support thumb-drives.
[quote]CDrw doesn't work in regular CD drives?<hr></blockquote>
don't know if this is still the case across the board, but back in the old days the only cd rom drives that could read RW discs were drives that were also burners. regular CD drives couldn't read them.
i must also interject that i work at a large universiry, and it does make a big difference. 5 years (7 years?) ago someone decided that zip drives would be a good idea across the board. now all the entrenched machines have them, so new machines tend to get them as well. i have 40,000+ people using zip disks within a 20 mile radius, so they're pretty popular here.
i suppose that could make a difference on perception.
Comments
Personally, I dig Zip disks. I've had a 100MB USB Zip Drive since I've had my first iMac (February 2000), and had a SCSI model before that one that I used with my Quadra 610.
I certainly don't use them for longterm archiving/storage (I'm not crazy!), but - IMO - there's nothing quicker and easier to use for shuttling or transporting files.
Granted, unlike many of you, I'm not doing super-duper high-res Photoshop stuff. Nor am I working in video or other space-hogging mediums.
But to throw some Illustrator stuff on, a few mp3s, some writings, a couple of downloaded utilities/shareware, a Quicken data file, fonts, etc., I'd MUCH rather copy it to a Zip disk, go where I'm going, copy it to the other machine and be done with it.
I'm not going to sit and waste time burning (and wasting) a CD for 28MB worth of stuff!
I do think this new (750MB) model is going to flop. Nobody really cares, things have moved on. As a matter of fact, most everything Iomega has done SINCE the original 100MB Zip drive has been a wash-out.
I think they could, as a company, get really small and tight and simply do what they do (did?) best: go back and just do the 100MB Zips.
Great for students, consumers, beginners, writers, shuttling stuff to work and back, etc.
100MB is a nice, large enough and even number. Besides, those are the drives that are out there in the largest numbers.
Just put all their energy/focus into making them faster, more reliable (eliminate that "click of death" syndrome), more affordable and compatible with all platforms and interfaces and OS's.
Everyone I know still uses - and likes - little 100MB Zip disks. They're just simple and hassle-free to use.
I can throw 40MB or so on one and be out the door in less time than it would take me to burn a CD of that amount (plus, when I get where I'm going, if I want to put OTHER stuff on that CD, I can't).
Zips are cool for what they are. And if you use them for the right purposes.
Leave the session open. Use CDrw. Speeds are pretty fast now.
I've been using the 16X in my brother's gateway. Adding a session here and there. Works fine on his computer and mine (with crappy 4X sony drive)
Is this a mac problem?
Anyway, the 16X takes all of 5 minutes to do a full 700MB disc. 40-50 megs takes about 20 seconds.
I don't get it? What's the problem with CD r/w ???
I honestly spend more time waiting for the blank disc to get initialized or whatever then for it to burn THEN for the verification, etc. than I would to just throw in on a Zip.
It's a case-by-case basis, and I often DO burn things to CD for transport. But if it's under 80MBs, I usually just grab one of my 8 100MB Zip disks and fling it all on there. While it's copying, I go pee or grab a soda or something.
Just a personal preference, that's all. No big deal.
Although, everywhere that I go in my Mac-using life, I have a Zip drive there, waiting for me. I don't have (in most cases) a CD-R, so...
Bringing stuff BACK with me gets tough without a Zip. That's another big reason.
close the cd session and you're fine, but that takes another 2 min.
then with cd-rw you have the problem that you can't read the cd's unless the other person also has a burner. often not the case.
zips are the easiest solution still in a wide variety of situations.
i used zips when they were only 100mb, they we're great then. i had a 250mb hard drive in my 6100/60- i stored all my mp3's on the zip and played them through MacAMP... sweetness. the problem with zips is that not everyone has them... i end up burning or just emailing stuff for people... my friends have cable and so do i so for most stuff i just ftp it...
there are so many less expensive options to zip that the utility of it is kind of lost in the price
It's not a huge levy per disc, but it really adds up. On a cheap disc it can double the price.
That said, if you feel bad throwing things away, don't CD-RWs work? Are other people having trouble erasing those with which I'm not familiar? They are supposed to work dozens of times, no? I've never hit the limit before losing or lending the disc... Of course the speed problem is compounded, but the fastest write is one you don't have to do a second time when you find out you need the file again on a computer without a Zip drive.
I'm no zealot either way. I've just purchased several of these alternative drives over and never have I known when writing a file that the recipient also had one. It's such a long shot I never think to ask. Therefore, no chance to use them. About a grand wasted over ten years. I always know a CD will be there, and I've only had two problems with CD-RWs not reading.
Of course, I'm given to understand that conditions are right in the closets of professional graphics designers for these drives to actually copulate and spawn young, and we all know that educational institutions are self-contained equipment universes that significantly affect the perceptions of those contained therein. I may very well not be on the same planet as you.
[ 08-16-2002: Message edited by: AllenChristopher ]</p>
Mine seem to work. Yeah, my bad, about the sessions, but you can still close the session without closing the CD.
It seems like 100Mb discs are cool if you got 'em from way back when CD burning was neither fast nor cheap, so as pscates pointed out, why not keep using them. But I don't think I would look to keep updating the technology.
It's really a shame that manufacturers couldn't agree on ONE flash memory format. We'd have had some kind of flash slot in all computers by now, and it would have been ideal. You buy the amount of storage you need and it all works in the same slot whether it's 8MB or 8GB.
Oh well, maybe USB thumb-drives will supercede most of our writeable personal information transport needs. I've read that there are driverless USB thumb-drives out there. Do they work? This would be ideal in a multi-platform application. Heck, even in a single platform, you never know if the computer you're going to has appropriate drivers.
If driverless thumb-drives are not really 'driverless' but rather some sort of marketing spin, then such support would seem to be a good thing to build into USB via firmware. A firmware update spec that makes all USB devices support thumb-drives.
don't know if this is still the case across the board, but back in the old days the only cd rom drives that could read RW discs were drives that were also burners. regular CD drives couldn't read them.
i must also interject that i work at a large universiry, and it does make a big difference. 5 years (7 years?) ago someone decided that zip drives would be a good idea across the board. now all the entrenched machines have them, so new machines tend to get them as well. i have 40,000+ people using zip disks within a 20 mile radius, so they're pretty popular here.
i suppose that could make a difference on perception.
How would a Zip compete against this. Not only do I have 1.3GB currently but the 2.3GB version is shipping this fall.
The media is much more reliable. And it's backwards compatible all the way back to 128MB Discs
CD/DVD rw for everything else. They'll soon be everywhere (especially CD). Simple.
All other media can and should just drop dead already. Except tape formats, studios still need those.