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Thursday, April 09, 1998 Wednesday, Iomega closed at $6 5/8, up $1/8 (+1.92%). TODAY'S RECAP: The Iomega board looked at a few new items of conversation: technical support, the new CEO and even the whole nature of data storage (specifically shelf life). There were also some random comments on multi-posting, stock price predictions and others, but those have not been reproduced here. Note: Because the markets will be closed on Friday, we won't be issuing an Iomega report tomorrow. See you on Monday! 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.
1++ LarryChief comments on Iomega technical support -- first-hand.
Recap written and posts compiled by TMF
Weekly. _______________________________ And now, the Best of the Board...Started 9:00pm ET 4/7/98. 1+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: IOM service Well, after nearly 3 years of hearing about Iomega service problems, today I had my first experience...and it was an excellent one. I needed help in learning how to re-format Jaz 2-gig PC-formatted cartridges to Mac format using my new Jaz2 drive on my Powerbook 3400c. Initially, the cart would try to boot up, then would quit, spin down, and eject. It turns out that apparently the PC Exchange program in Mac OS8.0 does not recognize media that are as big as 2 gigs, so the cart is just rejected. The solution was to disable the PC Exchange control panel, re-start the Powerbook, and run the Iomega Tools program. This first indicated no cart in the drive, so I inserted the cart. It spun up normally, and was recognized. I could then Erase the cart and re-format with verify. It worked perfectly. On the call, I reached a human operator within about 2 minutes, and she switched me to Eric in Jaz Technical Support (which is free, BTW). Eric knew exactly what to do, and had me on my way within 5 minutes. Unfortunately, the 25-30 other Zip/Jaz drives I am associated with at home or at work have never given a problem, so I don't expect to have another chance for such an excellent experience with Iomega support anytime in the near future... :-). PS thanks to Chuck at Cayuga Computers, who spent some time on this problem too. 2+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: ceo search Iomega placed an ad in todays wall street journal executive guidence page ( in the back of market place section) We need a CEO who is a proven leader in quality and customer service. This ad is to long to type but it looks like David J. Dunn the chairman is waisting no time finding kims replacement as it says in the ad all resumes and letters are strictly confidential and will only be reviewd by the chairman. Lets hope for the best. 3+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: NYT Article << Would this shelf life be expected to be similar for all magnetic medium? (Zip/Jaz/Tape/other variation of this) Has archiving traditionally (pre-CD) been done on tape? Has that been reliable? >> Can't really tell you whether one magnetic medium "decays" faster than another, but the bigger issue isn't the shelflife of media so much as it is that of the transport. Most long-term electronic archives being kept today are stored for some arbitrary regulatory period like seven years. Banks, for instance, archive copies of your checks, account statements, deposit records, etc. for that long because the banking regulations require it. Otherarchives are intended to support corporate liabilities over indefinite periods of time. Insurance companies, to name one example, regularly archive documents with the intention that they survive as long as an insured (or a claim by his estate) is alive, often 30 years or more. In today's marketplace, it's not uncommon for one organization to have a mix of regulatory and pragmatic archival requirements where we're nearly always talkingabout millions and millions of documents, i.e. a very large storage problem. By necessity, these archives must be easy to retrieve at a predictably low cost at anytime during their archival lifecycle. Now, imagine plotting a chart that shows the introduction dates and market lives of various recording devices over the past thirty years. Somewhere on that chart, you'll see the fast, furious marketlife that was 8-track audio tape. You'll see the introduction of beta and VHS formatted videotapes. Somewhere on there, you'll want to plot Bernoulli drives, and LS-120's and Zips, along with both open-reel and cassette audiotape. 45rpm records will bethere too, as will be those old 78's and all that righteous vinyl in your attic. If you're kind, Sony's minidisc will show up briefly, but it will be hard to ignore that whole truckload of mainframe storage options that trace the evolution of head-and-platter technology. And of course, there'll be dozens of data tape drives in more recording formats than I'd care to speculate. The point of all this is that storage technology evolves quite separately from our archival applications for it. And that causes complications when you're planning way ahead, as archivists do. Over the archival lifespan of one of those insurance policy applications, for instance, an insurer may upgrade his mainframe eight or ten times and the software that produces those records even more often. Generations of tape- and disk transports willcome and go, and if we've learned anything here, we know that each successive generation of gadgetry brings lower cost and higher performance to entice buyers, so we can throw in a few storage upgrades too. But how many times do you think that insurer will scrap his archival media and convert everything to the Next Great Thing in storage technology? What if that conversion effort exceeded the marketlife of the Next Great Thing? Bearing in mind that archival records are virtually never used in the day-to-day operation of a business and that they only exist to hedge unexpected liabilities, there is very little economic justification to "upgrade" those records whenever a new device offers marginal speed or capacity improvements. After a little experience keeping long-term electronic archives, most organizations give up on the idea that they'll keep their archival storagetechnology as fresh as their computers or software. So they buy for reliability and cost-per-megabyte over the long-haul and grit it out. Unfortunately for disk and optical storage manufacturers, major technical evolutions are coming way too fast. Last year's runaway optical disk jukebox gorilla is this year's toast. Just ask yourself How many thirty-year old storage manufacturers are there? How many of the current crop will be around in 2028? And if DiskTrend and the other industry watchers are correct, that excruciating competition won't let up anytime before your friendlybanker deletes her copy of your most recent checking account statement, say about April of 2005. Tape storage, for all its faults as a short-term interactive medium, has been less-prone to displace prior generations of tape every time another breakthrough occurs, and in the capacities that archivists must grapple, it's cheap. Generally, you can put a new drive technology online without changing your application programs or rendering your old drives obsolete, then convert your files incrementally as the old media and drives wear out. For thisreason, tape is and has been the more reliable choice for archival storage that must span many years. So, except for the abominable floppy, it's the shelflife of the device that matters the most.
Subject: Ooops! No sooner than the Long-Winded One posted extravagantly regarding media transport obsolescence, I spied a discarded copy of yesterday's science section from the NEW YORK TIMES (a section I skipped to attend my slumping Yankees). There, on page F4 is a far better treatment of the issues than I could render. Apologies to author Stephen Manes and all who may have read his excellent article then wondered why I found it necessary to babble on so uninformedly. _______________________________
End Report. Posts covered through 9:00pm ET 4/8/98.
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