zip drives--more

[Joyce Flaherty <flahertj -at- SMTPGW -dot- LIEBERT -dot- COM>]

Text item: Text_1

     ref: msg fr Hal Snyder, Mike Starr, David Mitchell, Turtle, and others

     I have been working with the iomega zip drives since iomega
     announced availability several months ago.  I have a SCSI drive
     at work and a parallel drive at home, and I can't live without them.

     The various messages in this thread speak well to the issues,
     namely usefulness, cost, availability, speed.  Reliability is a
     bit of a concern to those posting, primarily because we have
     little experience, so I offer the following:

     We are using six parallel drives to deploy an online package.
     We average nine minutes per 60 Mb, and we are loading about
     thirty machines a week.  The only problem we are having in the
     deployment that we might attribute to the zip drive is copying
     a large *.zip file from the drive to a machine that has Stacker
     installed.  Either the zip drive doesn't like Stacker, or Stacker
     doesn't like the zip drive and/or the zip file, but it can be
     a problem.  Other than that single possible problem, the drives
     are taking a beating getting shipped all over the country, and
     they keep working.  We received one bad zip diskette.  When I
     called our supplier, I asked the service rep how many bad diskettes
     he handles.  He said two or three a week.  I asked him how many
     diskettes he ships a week.  He said 300-400.  You extrapolate
     your own reliability figures.

     Personally, I find I cannot get along without my drive.  I backed
     off whole resource-intense applications, such as HiJaak Suite and
     CorelDraw!  This is a wonderful alternative to uninstalling, although
     Bill Gates put a monkey wrench into that approach with Windows 95/NT.

     Finally (before I get the same "I thought she'd never shut up"
     message), I agree with Mike Starr, that the best way to deliver
     your softcopy files is on the net.  Not all individuals have figured
     this out yet.  If you don't believe Mike and you don't believe me,
     ask Bill Horton.

     My $.02,
        Take a decision,
        Get a zip drive,
        Enjoy!

        When it not longer gets the job done for you,
        donate it to your local school.  They'll love it.

     joyce flaherty