At 12:37 PM -0400 9/11/02, Michael Tulloch wrote: >I agree on that. The prices for keychain drives are falling and they're >close to or over 100 Mb depending on how much you want to spend. I've had >terrific fortune with Iomega though. I had a ZIP drive that lasted through >four years and at least three moves.
My own limited experience with Iomega ZIP drives has improved over the years. I now own and use four of them -- two of the 250 meg and two of the 100 meg. Initially I had two 100 meg external drives and a 100 internal that came in a PTP 225. (I also had a dead 100 meg that came that way in a PTP100 I bought from Good Will Industries. These were all, of course, SCSI drives. One of my 100's went south and I contacted Iomega for some out-of-warranty satisfaction. They did a telephone analysis (yes, I felt kinda stupid saying, "Well, it goes zuupa, zuupa, clack, clack, clack, but then when I ..."). Anyway, the analysis was that I had a damaged drive and it may have been caused by a bad disk initially. I ended up sending in the drive and two disks. I kept the power supply. What I received in return was, two new disks and a refurbished drive with power supply -- a 250 meg drive. Cost? Nothing but the one-way shipping. I then bought a brand new 250 meg USB/Firewire ZIP drive for a real bargain at the time (direct from Iomega) and it has worked flawlessly. The key I think is that if a disk starts to give the clack of death sound GET IT OUT OF THERE IMMEDIATELY since it could be a transient or disk problem but if you let it go on for awhile the drive could be damged. Of course that is my own folklore suspicion. Also, the drive in the PTP went south at some point and I went to Good Will Industries and purchased an internal 100 for $30 that has worked fine. My suspicions are that serious problems existed primarily with the 100 meg drives and there was a pretty high turnover rate. At one point the company may have tried to bend over backwards to satisfy customers and keep a customer base. That may no longer be the case and if I have to deal with Iomega again over any drive problems, I will report back. In the meantime, I use the USB drive between two iBooks (mine and the wife's). It is the sneaker net drive. We just pass the USB cable back and forth (from opposite ends of the diningroom table) when we have files to exchange (ejecting the disk first). The 250 meg SCSI is functioning fine on the PTP 200 (with the original dead 100 meg still in the computer) and the internal 100 is still doing fine in the PTP 225. As you may have surmised, I have too many computers. I am considering selling the PTP 225. It has 512 Meg of memory, a 2 gig and a 4 gig hard disk, CD-ROM drive, internal ZIP 100, and all six empty PCI slots. Any offers? I'm in Austin, Texas. Anyway, I wanted to add my positive Iomega experience to the mix in all fairness. Fred Meredith -- When in doubt ... ride your bike (or at least write about it). More Bikin' Fred and Nancy at: http://2merediths.org -- Power Computing is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 123Inkjets.com <http://lowendmac.com/ad/123inkjets.html> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Power Computing list info: <http://lowendmac.com/power/list.html> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> List archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powercomputing%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
