[Vader�s Pinch of Death]

iomega really had a chance to replace the floppy disk that hung around for 20 damn years even though they sucked. The zip drive was the answer to everyone's prayers who needed 100 megs of removable storage for a reasonable cost.

The problems were that first the click of death was tons of bad press and very widespread.
I had a drive fail on my today and iomega refuses to replace it even though there was a class action suite over it. The best they could do is 30% off on a new drive. Ya right, they are half that cost on ebay... new.

More importantly they always charged outrageous prices for the disks themselves. An average of $14 for ONE disk. When 3rd party cheaper disks came out iomega shut them down. Even after the drives were incredibly popular the cost of zip disks never came down.

The newer 250 drives were never as widespread as it wrote to 100 megs disks very very slowly.

I have never seen a 750 meg drive in use anywhere as for the cost of the expensive as hell drive and 1 disk you can have a CD-R burner. CD's are about 30 cents each for 700 megs when 750 zip disks are $15 each. If you want to rewrite you can buy a CD-RW for less and bet that it will work in far more places then a 750 zip ever would. Even more scary is that a 750 zip drive will not write any of the well established 100 meg disks.

In the past 2 years I have seen zips go from a standard to as rare as floppies.

Even now with CD-R as the standard and DVD-r about to take over iomega still charges outrageous prices for zip. The second rate flash media and CD burners they sell will not keep them afloat for long.

And don't even get me started on the Jazz drive. And they wonder why it is dead.

Goodbye iomega!

[Mastrap]

Haven't seen, or used, a zip disc for years. I had no idea they were still around.

[daimoni]

.

[Adam Betts]

I'm pretty surprised that they're still alive by now.

I just hope they will die because of their dirty business practice. I lost lot and lot of money cause of them. Click of death, ZIP drives with a life span of two years or less, ridiculously high margin price on disks, etc etc etc etc

[Vader�s Pinch of Death]

I and i got those 40 meg click drives (strange name considering) and a hip zip MP3 player. Sold that thing a year ago.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by Vader�s Pinch of Death:
And don't even get me started on the Jazz drive. And they wonder why it is dead.

Don't forget Peerless.

What a trash bin

[Vader�s Pinch of Death]

Ha forgot about that one. Remember this one!

[engaged]

Umm... I actually bought an external USB 2.0 Zip 750 last year. It's the only way I can easily transfer files between home and university. I'd bought a 128MB USB flash drive, but it turns out that they'd disabled all the USB ports on the PC's - shame, as it would'be been ideal.

I use 250MB Zip discs, and haven't had a problem so far...

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by engaged:
Umm... I actually bought an external USB 2.0 Zip 750 last year. It's the only way I can easily transfer files between home and university.

I use 250MB Zip discs, and haven't had a problem so far...

Iomega 32324 Zip 750MB External USB Drive
$166.99

LaCie d2 52x32x52 External FireWire CD-RW Drive
$114.99

[Altix]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:

LaCie d2 52x32x52 External FireWire CD-RW Drive
$114.99

I use that lacie drive and it's a cracker.

[gadster]

Iomega are still in busin . . . busin . . . busin . . .busin . . busin . . .?

<Error -36> bummer.

[xi_hyperon]

The Jazz was a complete and utter disaster, at least when it came out (I don't know if they ever improved its quality or discontinued it). After making the mistake of investing in a couple of those at work a few years ago, I lost respect for iomega and its products. I am surprised that they are still around.

[mitchell_pgh]

I'll just say it...

iomega isn't going out of business because of bad technology, it's because of progress.

100MB Zip drive = $14
700MB CD-R = 20�

I feel very comfortable handing a CD-R to someone and never expecting to see it again. CD-R burners were a novelty back in the 1995-1998 era (when iomega was king), but now that you can't buy a computer without a CD burner... what do you think people are going to use.

Once CD-R started standardizing and the price of the drives become somewhat trivial... most people switched over.

Very few people are still using them.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by engaged:
Umm... I actually bought an external USB 2.0 Zip 750 last year. It's the only way I can easily transfer files between home and university.

[Altix]

They'll probably go the same way as Syquest.

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, nothing was ever so reliable as the Bernoulli. I've still got mine, though it's been a long while since I used it last.

[SeSawaya]

I have a ZIP 100 but havent used it in years either. The drive I wished could've caught on is my ORB drive 2.2 gigs on a Zip like disc. Mine have never failed even after 4 years. I use it with my EMU sampler and VS880EX digital audio workstation. Great product really.

[chris v]

I've got Zip 250's on all my machines. I don't use them personally, at all any more (The external firewire zip 250 I ordered for my Cube at home was a HUGE mistake) but a client will still walk through my door with one every few weeks.

Travel to/from I do either by FTP (the intarweb RULES!) or iPod these days. Files to go = CDR.

CV

[gorickey]

Zip? Wow, I had erased that company/technology out of my head...

[Vader�s Pinch of Death]

Originally posted by SeSawaya:
I have a ZIP 100 but havent used it in years either. The drive I wished could've caught on is my ORB drive 2.2 gigs on a Zip like disc. Mine have never failed even after 4 years. I use it with my EMU sampler and VS880EX digital audio workstation. Great product really.

I just sold my ORB drive yesterday on ebay. Yes it was good and for $30 for 2.2 gigs it couldn't be beat. but... they never came out with a USB 2.0 or Firewire version so 2.2 gigs through USB took an hour to fill the disk. Not to mention I can buy an external hard drive as they are rather cheap now.

[mitchell_pgh]

the only reason I still have one around is for old jobs that I may get from clients.

It's annoying because they want them back...

[killer_735]

.....not soon enough, that's how long.

When I started school they had hundreds of G3 towers with zip-100 drives, and were encouraging all the students to use zips for their work. Now design students, of course, generate huge files that have had hundreds of things done to them, and it always seemed to be a design (or photo) student running around totally out of their mind because they lost a zip disk or more often, were victims of the click o' death. Poor bastards never heard of FTP and university webspace.

[engaged]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Iomega 32324 Zip 750MB External USB Drive
$166.99

LaCie d2 52x32x52 External FireWire CD-RW Drive
$114.99

I see your point, however, only a few PC's at my university have CD burners in them - maybe it's different at yours! So I'm stuffed if I want to bring files home with me as the email isn't reliable enough with attachments. Oh yeah, and I can't FTP stuff onto my webspace from uni either...

(Actually got the 750MB Zip drive with three 750MB discs for about $150.)

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by engaged:
I see your point, however, only a few PC's at my university have CD burners in them - maybe it's different at yours! So I'm stuffed if I want to bring files home with me as the email isn't reliable enough with attachments. Oh yeah, and I can't FTP stuff onto my webspace from uni either...

(Actually got the 750MB Zip drive with three 750MB discs for about $150.)

Yeah but when you need more zip disks, they're realllly expensive:

8pk ZIP 750
$93.98

I think it's too silly

[engaged]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Yeah but when you need more zip disks, they're realllly expensive:

8pk ZIP 750
$93.98

I think it's too silly

They're not cheap, admittedly. I haven't actually touched the 750MB discs yet as the drives at uni are only 250MB, so I've only been using 250MB discs.
They serve a purpose, and works on both my PC and iBook. We're all just annoyed that we can't use USB flash drives there - would be great if we could.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by engaged:
We're all just annoyed that we can't use USB flash drives there - would be great if we could.

What kind of technology-impaired university did you enroll in?

[engaged]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
What kind of technology-impaired university did you enroll in?

'Security' concerns, allegedly, was the reason for disabling USB ports on all PC's.

[wdlove]

I had a lot of trouble with the Jaz 1 & 2 gig. Still use the Zip 100, they have been very reliable. I wasn't aware that Iomega was in trouble,

[Sherwin]

I use Zip 250's daily. Cheaper and faster than a tape drive. Not as much hassle as CD.

I laugh every time peeps who say "I'll back up onto CD" lose their data 'coz they haven't bothered to actually do it.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

[thePurpleGiant]

Still got a 1GB Jazz drive out the back somewhere I actually thought it was great at the time. Had a 750MB hard drive, so the 1GB disks were awesome

[Cadaver]

I had two machines with a Zip drive at one point (PowerComputing PowerCenter Pro and a blue & white G3).
No trouble with either, amazingly, despite the hundreds and hundreds of people who experienced the "click of death."

However, since CD-R, CD-RW and USB flash drives, the Zip has become pretty useless today.

[dampeoples]

Never used one, although my dad was telling me last year that he got some for his school to transfer the school paper stuff around.
He didn't have a good answer when I asked why didn't he use CD's or USB drives.

[OldManMac]

They've been through at least six CEOs in the last five years; that should tell you something.

[zigzag]

They always worked reliably for me. One advantage was that they could be password-protected. I sold my 250 on eBay a few months ago for $100.

[Mr. Blur]

i still have a zip-250 usb....i won it in a draw a few years ago. comes in handy once in a while if i need to transfer files to work.

[DeathToWindows]

The day I bought a flash drive was teh last day I used a zip.

[swiz]

It really sucks that I bought a 2gig Jaz drive in college and have life 6 disks for it too that I found in storage last week. I could sell it for about $15 after having paid around $600.

Not to mention they had to replace the Jaz three times due to them not working. Pure crap.

[OldManMac]

I just got one of these today. No matter where I go, I have a small drive.

[busket68]

I have a 100meg drive and a few discs, and I actually like it. I don't use it because ..well, I have no use for it, but I like how RUGGED the zip discs are. Cds are easy to scratch, break, or ruin. Zip discs are pretty durable.

- Rob

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by KarlG:
I just got one of these today. No matter where I go, I have a small drive.

Hehe, way too geeky!

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by busket68:
Zip discs are pretty durable.

Yeah, they're so durable with click of death

IMHO, CDs/DVDs are more durable than ZIP. 70% of my ZIP disks are non-functional. I've only had two damaged CDs out of hundreds.

[Paco500]

A place where I worked bought a bunch of Jaz drives and disks for a big platform migration project (Mac to Win95, very tragic). The drives and disks failed at an alrming rate, and so they gave them to my group. At one time I had 2 drives and ~70 disks. It was like russian roulet using the damn things. I finally trew them all away about a year ago. It was hard, I new they were total crap, but it was all worth so much when they were bought.

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Here is the latest bomb:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115615,00.asp

[xi_hyperon]

Originally posted by Immortal K-Mart Employee:
Here is the latest bomb:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115615,00.asp

Looks like an old SyQuest drive/cartridge system.

[chris v]

Originally posted by Immortal K-Mart Employee:
Here is the latest bomb:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115615,00.asp

Really-- why the hell not just buy a 40 GB Firewire drive? At $60.00, the disks are too expensive to send out, and who is going to have the interface on the other end? So the only point can be backing up--so go Firewire HD.

Lame.

CV

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by KarlG:
I just got one of these today. No matter where I go, I have a small drive.

No matter where I go, geeks can quickly recognize me.... well, that and my black t-shirt that says "There's no place like /~"...

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by chris v:
Really-- why the hell not just buy a 40 GB Firewire drive? At $60.00, the disks are too expensive to send out, and who is going to have the interface on the other end? So the only point can be backing up--so go Firewire HD.

Lame.

CV

I'm actually trying to figure out why someone would buy one of these.

- You could buy a couple of 120GB firewire drives for $260.
- The cost/MB is high
- DVD-R hold 1/10th as much, but are much less expensive (for backup)

The only area would be film... I guess, but most modern places have fast enough networks to move that data around...

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Vader�s Pinch of Death:
I just sold my ORB drive yesterday on ebay. Yes it was good and for $30 for 2.2 gigs it couldn't be beat. but... they never came out with a USB 2.0 or Firewire version so 2.2 gigs through USB took an hour to fill the disk. Not to mention I can buy an external hard drive as they are rather cheap now.

I still have my SCSI Orb drive, works like a champ and it's fast.

Zips are absolutely pointless. For $100 you can get a 20GB FireWire pocket drive. For a few bucks more you can get a combo USB 2.0/FireWire drive. Problem with USB not being bus powered like FireWire is that you'd need to find an open outlet for the AC adapter, which isn't always an option.

But then again, trying to get a Zip 250 to read your Zip 750 disk is downright impossible.

[Vader�s Pinch of Death]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I still have my SCSI Orb drive, works like a champ and it's fast.

I just sold mine when I got a superdrive.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Vader�s Pinch of Death:
I just sold mine when I got a superdrive.

Didn't know they were still worth money.

I might sell mine if/when I get my dual 3.0GHz.