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Friday, February 27, 1998 Thursday, Iomega closed at $9 3/16, up $1/8 (+1.38%). TODAY'S RECAP: Iomega competition played a major role in many discussions on the board yesterday -- SparQ, flash memory, Sony's HiFD drive and more. Other posters talked about a Wall Street Journal article featuring IOM and the best way to allow clik! to compete with flash memory, including a Zip-drive caddy idea. Enjoy! INDEX: Use the Search or Find feature of your word processor to locate the article number (Find: 1++, 3++, etc.) - or use AOL's Edit>>Find in Top Window Feature. If Find in Top Window is dimmed, just click on some text, anything, in the IOM Today window and try again.
1++ Zildjian01 provides a URL for a favorable Powerbook Zip drive
review.
Recap written and posts compiled by TMF Weekly. _______________________________ And now, the Best of the Board...Started 9:00pm ET 2/25/98. 1+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Review of VST Zip 100 Wow... great review for the laptop zip... http://macworld.zdnet.com/pages/april.98/Reviews.4250.html 2+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: The most popular camera is... Most recent issue of Money magazine rates digital cameras. Their top suggestion, pictured prominently? The Sony Mavica. Major emphasis on the storage medium--regular floppies. Plug 'em straight into your computer. I have a feeling a lot more consumers read Money than read Consumer Computer Electronic Gizmo Marketing Weekly. I can spin this both ways (can't we all, can't we all...) Sony MIGHT be positioned, yea even intending, to sneak attack IOM by putting their new HiFD drive/disk in a next-generation Mavica. I have not one iota of an idea whether this is possible, I am not an engineer. I hope it's not possible. But if it's possible, this would not steal a march, it would likely end the digital camera war. The Sony consumer name + high capacity removable storage for the camera. But spin it the other way. From what others have said, the quality/quantity of pictures available on the Mavica is sharply limited. But what if digital cameras became available with say 24-25 times the storage capacity of a floppy disk, allowing much greater flexibility in both number of pictures and quality...with really small, easily portable disks...for say $10.00 each... I prefer the second spin. 3+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Review of Jaz 2GB Iomega's Jaz Climbs Up to 2 Gigabytes / April... http://www.zdnet.com/wsources/content/0498/hw_jaz2.html 4+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: $50/gigabyte competition Jqlyons writes: << Conventional hard drives in the 4gigabyte and larger size range are now selling for about 50 bucks per gigabyte. The ZIP and JAZZ drive alternatives are far more expensive. I can back up my files on a second harddrive for much less money than it would cost to back them up on a ZIP or JAZZ drive. Since the price of hard drives has been changing so rapidly, I don't think the paradyme of using a second harddrive as back-up is widely practiced at this point, but since it is so much cheaper to do it that way it is only a matter of time until the practice becomes more wide spread. When it does become wide spread, IOM will probably take a hit. >> Your cost analysis is correct, but backing up to a second hard drive does not satisfy the reasons for doing a backup. It does not provide a "secure" second source for the data. Backups should be stored away from the primary data. What happens if someone steals your computer, or drops a cup of coffee on it, or your office burns? You are left with no useable copies of your data. Good backup practice would have you store the backup off-site, or at least in a fire-proof safe, not another drive bay in the same "box". 5+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal this am Definately check out the WSJ today, the special Shareholder Scorecard Section: It Lists Iomega as the #1 Best Performer over the last 3 Years (+258%) #2 Best Performer over last 5 years (+90.8%) #2 Best Performer over last 10 years (+60.7%) Iomega is listed higher than some impressive names (ie- Dell, Microsoft & AOL). IOM certainly did not make the list of best performers over the last 1 year, but you can't have everything. Read the article on Page R2-3. It's fairly well balance stating both positives and a lot of the negatives and uncertaintities surrounding the company's future. I will leave you with one quote in the article regarding JP Morgan analyst Daniel Kunstler: "Mr. Kunstler, though, lists Iomega as a 'buy' and gives the stock a greater than 50% chance of shooting to $18 within 12 months. It's not that he doesn't think the company has some steep challenges ahead of it; he just thinks management can pull it off." Now I'm not sure how Mr. Kunstler arrived at a projected price of $18. Was it sophisticated number crunching and future valuation. OR Is it the hope that JP Morgan can finally get their institutional clients, who purchased shares in the last IOM underwriting at about $17.5 (split-adjusted), out at a profit. 6+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: syquest is better Cheaper per meg. is IMO the wrong way of evaluating Zip/Sparq for the following reasons: 1. Non of my files are close to being in excess of 1 meg. If they were I would have purchased a Jaz long ago. The 100 Meg capacity is just about perfect for the average individual for the purpose of saving and transfering files. Why spend more on discs if the added space is unnecessary? For backing up my whole system, I use Ditto-Max with a 7Gig capacity uncondensed. 2. Packards, and Cords were great cars and yet if I needed service or parts, good luck as they are both out of business, Syquest ? 3. If I wanted to send my friends stuff, almost all have Zip drives, would my Sparq disc work? 4. Maybe I wanted to copy something at Kinko's, sorry Charlie only Zip available! In sum, if greater than 100meg were practicle for the average low end use then the 200 meg Zip would have already been out and in use as it has been available in the lab for a long time. Zip disks are inexpensive, and becoming more and more ubiquitious. Just in case you don't get what I mean, If I had a 50 Gig device that sold for 1000$ The discs sold for 85 dollars, it would be cheaper per meg than any of the above, but what would I need it for? If my car goes 130 miles per hour, and a Ferrari goes 200 mph, where would I use the extra speed? Do you think selling cars at dollars /miles per hour really is the way to decide on what car I should buy? Just for the record, I went to the Detroit Auto Show Last Month and you know what? The new VW is going to be a real hit! Do you want to bet that they sell more than the whole Porsche line? 7+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Clik Caddy I saw a nifty ad for a new product that allows you to insert Flash cards in the PC Card format or Compact Flash Cards into a "drive" that attaches to any PC. It costs only $149. Nice huh? Iomega is trying to use the external Clik to achieve the same feat, but at $199 I don't think that feeds the bulldog, At all. If there is any way to develop a Zip caddy with enough Clik workings inside it to read Clik disks into a Zip drive, Iomega must announce and release such a product. I'd recommend a price of $49, but introductory pricing up to $89-99 might be acceptable. This will leverage the huge Zip base and give Clik a leg up. Without it, the road is gonna be a bit longer. That flash drive isn't cheap, of course, but it's cheaper than a Clik external allegedly will be. Iomega is going to use price, price and price to sell Clik. The $49 Zip caddy (leverage the motor, use a clik head assembly that outputs magnetic info to the Zip head assembly) would help re-take the price ground. 8+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Clik Caddy In a discussion about MarkRogo's clik! caddy idea, I posted: << ... the clik! drive in use with the digital cameras may be able to connect directly to computers directly through this type of faster ports (faster than the serial port). ... >> (too many "driectly" there, LOL ... ) Thanks to BLuchsinge for responding to my post: << ... I think Mark Rogo's point is that if I had a click! disk in hand, I would like to be able to pop it into my Zip drive, without having to have my click! equipped camera or a click! drive. ... >> But MarkRogo's suggestion may be difficult to implement. MarkRogo's idea: << ... If there is any way to develop a Zip caddy with enough Clik workings inside it to read Clik disks into a Zip drive, Iomega must announce and release such a product. I'd recommend a price of $49, but introductory pricing up to $89-99 might be acceptable. .... ..... The $49 Zip caddy (leverage the motor, use a clik head assembly that outputs magnetic info to the Zip head assembly) would help re-take the price ground. >> If there is any way .... we are dealing with flying (floating) heads there on both the clik! and Zip heads, not contact heads. My point is that to make that type of sophisticated clik! caddy with the inserting portion no thicker than a Zip disk may be more complicated and expensive than another whole external clik! drive, IMHO. Huibs pht had this idea too about clik! caddy in Zip drive. Huibs had this idea even before Olympus (? or someone else) was showing a "caddy" for the 1.44MB drive to read flash cards during the recent PMA show. "Caddy for the 1.44MB drive to read flash cards" may have mostly all contacts: contact between flash output and the caddy, and contact between the 1.44MB drive heads and the caddy "medium". I don't know why the original n.Hand caddy idea wouldn't work or why it was abandoned. It probably used the Iomega "Ramps inside a disk (caddy)" patent to guide the Zip heads to reach the n.Hand media. It seemed to be very simple and elegant. I don't know why it was abandoned at all. Still, you know what? With a caddy system, even if you can read your clik! disk through the caddy in the Zip drive, but you can't have a Zip disk in your Zip drive while your clik! disk in a caddy is inserted inside the same Zip drive. _______________________________ End Report. Posts covered through 9:00pm ET 2/26/98. _______________________________
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