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Well,
I think anyone who buys Iomega products deserves the shafting they get with
the inferior products:
Here's Iomega's MD competetor:
http://www.iomega.com/hipzip/index.html
$299, with 40MB (20 minutes of 256kbps MP3) media costing $10. Wow, they are
REAL cool! </sarcasm>
-Rob
----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon Mackay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "MiniDisc Mailing List (E-mail)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 8:57 AM
Subject: MD: MD Data 2 - why can't it be marketed as a "Zip killer"?
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> I have read about the MD Discam on the Sony Web site and it only can hold
up
> to 20 minutes worth of video on one MD Data2 disc which can hold 640 Mb of
> data. If Sony improved the disc access time for MD Data so that it is
> comparable to a hard disk, they could end up with a product that overtakes
> Iomega's low-end removeable data storage solutions easily.
>
> The orginal MD Data hardware was known to be as slow as a floppy, require
a
> SCSI interface which wasn't common on PCs at the time of its release; and
> was very expensive. Iomega stole the thunder out of this format because
its
> portable Zip drive had higher-speed access, worked with a parallel-port
> interface and was sold in a price-subsidised manner where there were cheap
> drives and expensive media.
>
> Now the landscape for MD Data has changed significantly. Most computers
made
> since 1997 have a USB port on them for connection of removeable media
> devices and similar peripherals and Firewire is now considered a valid
> option for a ultra-high-speed access prot for removeable media hardware.
If
> a manufacturer designs a USB peripheral such as a removeable-media drive
to
> consume a small amount of power, they can have the device draw power from
> the host computer. The speed of access and data throughput can be improved
> by use of higher-than-normal spindle speeds and spinning
> constant-linear-velocity media like CD-ROM and MD Data at a fixed spindle
> speed unless "real-time" data like sound or video is being moved.
>
> Also, an MD Data 2 disc can carry over 1440 1.3 Megapixel JPEG digital
> camera images held at a low compression ratio, or 320 2.1 Megapixel images
> held at a low compression rate. This format will be a boon to the digital
> camera user, who has to mess around with buying lots of expensive memory
> cards to use their digital camera at its best potential or use
> low-resolution shooting modes which don't bring out the best in today's
> digital cameras so they can cover themselves for a long photography
session.
> A good peripheral that makes use of MD Data 2 would be an image-transfer
> unit which copies images held on a memory card onto an MD Data 2 disc.
This
> is in a similar vein to what Iomega are selling with their PocketZip drive
> for digital cameras and their Fotoshiw Image Viewer which copies digital
> images from Compact Flash or SmartMedia cards to Zip disks.
>
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