RE: VXA Discount URL
Robert: It's at www.ecrix.com/eval The promotional offer is extended through October. --Geoff Rainville, Ecrix. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Robert Schwalbe Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 5:04 PM To: retro-talk Subject: VXA Discount URL Within the last three weeks it seems that someone made mention of Ecrix extending a special promotion that included a 30 day evaluation unit along with software, accessories, and a pretty darn good price. It certainly doesn't seem to be promoted on Ecrix's website and while even though I've seen the web pages that contained this special extended offer with my own eyes, I've seemed to misplace the URL. Would someone be kind enough to either once again post it to this list or just e-mail it to me? -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050. -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050.
VXA Mac Tool
There was some talk on this list last week about the VXA Tool for Mac. It is now live and posted on the ecrix.com site, in the support section. VXATool for MAC is a MAC based utility used to configure your VXA-1 tape drive. With VXATool, you can check and uplevel firmware, optimize the drive for speed or capacity, and toggle compression off or on. As someone mentioned last week, this ain't a pretty program, but just a nice, functional tool. Enjoy, and thanks for VXA support. http://www.ecrix.com/support/download.html --Geoff Rainville, Ecrix. -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050.
RE: Advice requested: tape system
The VXA promotion has indeed been extended through September, but is not available to our friends in the U.K.: limited to US and Canada only, since it's a direct-sales promotion through the web store, and we don't (yet!) sell in Europe. We're working on it. Egghead offers a great price right now on V17 tapes, and I haven't checked but some of the other e-tailers may be matching them. Thanks for recommending our drive!!! Geoff Rainville Ecrix Corp. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ben Liberman Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 7:58 AM To: retro-talk Subject: Re: Advice requested: tape system At 8:58 AM +0100 9/18/00, Graham, Total Coverage Limited wrote: For this comparison, I've included the VXA-1 at the promotional price since it's been extended through Aug and is available to everyone. The VXA promotion has been extended through Sept. http://www.vxa.com/eval/index.cfm?a=834p=aff Also, in Graham's chart, the VXA V-17 media (33 gig native) is listed at $67. Anyone know where I can find it at this price? The best that I've found so far is ~72.50 -- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ben Liberman -- -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: VXA drive (was DDS-3 vs DDS-4?)
Steve: You're killing me here. A two-year tape purchase in advance, but we won't get the sale? It used to be said that "no one got fired for buying IBM" but that's not true anymore...lots of new companies with smarter, better technologies took some market share from them. So here we are with a better technology, a better price point, a product you like, but no sale: too risky, and you're going to go with the "established" company. That's one of those close-ended arguments that's tough to debate. You already know that Ecrix was started by long-time pro's in this market, and that the team here has gone from start-up to established business before. And we intend to do it again. You already know that there's a possibility of some of these more established companies abandoning tape altogether...sure the company will still be around, but who knows what tape-related service you'll get in two years. Dang, it's -tough- to build and sell a better moustrap. Can we smack your boss around a bit? Sorry, just joshing with you. DDS is obviously worthy competition and a fine product. We'll talk to you in two years. Marketing pitch: For those of you not "corporate clones" we're doing the August promotion right now, at www.vxa.com/eval: Internal Kit $489, External Kit $649, Internal Retrospect Bundle $589, External Retrospect Bundle $749 ---- Geoff Rainville Web Promotions Ecrix Corporation [EMAIL PROTECTED] 303-245-9669 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Rothman Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 9:18 AM To: retro-talk Subject: Re: VXA drive (was DDS-3 vs DDS-4?) (The only single-tape solution in my price range is VXA, which sounds very nice, but there is NO WAY I will go with a new, single-vendor solution...) You really have to look at risk vs. cost in this case. You can get into a VXA drive with a few tapes for $600-$700 and have an immediate 33-66Gb single-tape backup capacity. You'll pay about twice that much for a DDS equivalent, and more for anything else. That would be great in many situations. In my particular case, I need to specify everything I need for a two year time span (which in my case means two drives plus all tapes and cleaning tapes, etc.) on a single purchase order. It looks to me, for my particular requirements, including the two drives, required tapes, etc. that VXA is about halfway between DDS-2 and DDS-4 in price. If I was judging this purely on price specs, I'd go for the VXA, because of the promised reliability and only needing a single tape/backup. But in my particular situation, I cannot tolerate the risk that my VXA drives may go bad a year from now and that no one besides Ecrix could fix/replace them. How can I predict the responsiveness of the Ecrix repair department over the years to come? Also, when my two year supply of tapes is up, in mid-2002, will VXA tapes be readily accessible and reasonably priced? Perhaps, perhaps not... I know, for a fact, that there will be multiple sources to repair/replace DDS-3 drives over the next 2 - 3 year, and that DDS-3 media will be available from multiple vendors over the next 2 - 3 years. If I was looking basically 6 months ahead, or more of a gambler, I would probably buy Ecrix anyway. It sounds like a great drive and I wish them luck! But I'm not a gambler, I'm a corporate clone that will have an angry boss if my backup strategy fails in a year or so because I picked a brand-new, single-source mechanism/media vendor that my boss never heard of... -Steve -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: VXA drive (was DDS-3 vs DDS-4?)
Larry Acosta Wong posted this very nice chart to this list about two weeks ago, and I hope he won't mind me reposting it here again. His VXA media cost is from his reseller, who is selling for less than we do on our website. --geoff --- Exabyte M2: 60GB, 12MB/s, $3777 ($80 media) Sony AIT-2: 50GB, 6MB/s, $3289 ($94 media) DLT 8000 : 40GB, 6MB/s, $3915 ($64 media) Sony AIT-1: 35GB, 3MB/s, $1913 ($88 media) VXA-1 : 33GB, 3MB/s, $939 ($67 media) DDS-4 : 20GB, 3MB/s, $1072 ($33 media) Mammoth : 20GB, 3MB/s, $2126 ($56 media) DLT 4000 : 20GB, 1.5MB/s, $1352 ($64 media) Mammoth-LT: 14GB, 2MB/s, $1193 ($35 media) DDS-3 : 12GB, 1MB/s, $777 ($16 media) Eliant 820: 7GB, 1MB/s, $1160 ( $8 media) DDS-2 : 4GB, .51MB/s, $606 ( $7 media) -Native capacity listed, compressed capacity is typically 50% more -Sustained transfer rate listed -Cost is based on internal model with wide SCSI connector (if available) -VXA-1 tape drive is even cheaper through Ecrix July promo ($539) -Media listed is highest capacity format in single packs --- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve Rothman Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 12:11 PM To: retro-talk Subject: RE: VXA drive (was DDS-3 vs DDS-4?) Steve: You're killing me here. A two-year tape purchase in advance, but we won't get the sale? Now that you're mentioning tape... Your promotional drive prices are very nice. The "External Retrospect Bundle" for $750 is slightly better than the LaCie DDS-3 + Retro avail from MacWarehouse for $800. But let's talk about tape prices. It looks to me like the VXA 33/66 cartridge costs about $75 from Ecrix. It's not hard to find a DDS-3 12/24 cartridge for $18. So it looks like on a pure $/GB basis, VXA media costs about 50% more than DDS-3 ($2.27/GB for VXA vs $1.50/GB for DDS-3). And that ain't all. In the real world, my backup set is going to be some arbitrary size, so in many cases the price differential gets even worse. In my particular case, my backup set is about 25-30 GB (native). So that ranges from 2 to 3 DDS3 carts ($18 - $54) or 1 VXA cart ($75). And I want to purchase about 10 "sets" worth of media, because I do both "rotating" and also permanent archiving. It looks to me like with DDS3 I can probably get started with about 25 or 30 tapes ($450-540), but with VXA media I'd need at least 10 tapes ($750). So I would be paying two or three hundred dollars extra for VXA media. And it could get worse - what if my requirements gradually grow to 35 or 40GB native per set? I believe getting a few extra DDS3 carts a year or two down the road is going to be cheap and easy. We have no idea what the availability or price will be for VXA in a year or two. (I haven't even got into the prices for cleaning cartridges, but it appears to me that the VXA cleaning cartridges are far more expensive than DDS-3, but then I don't know how often either of them needs to be used.) Listen, I'm not at all trying to slam Ecrix or VXA. I'm very hopeful that the technology works out and becomes a big player in the market, with more vendor support, etc. For that matter, if I was to buy a small system now for my home computer I would strongly consider your product, because for a home scenario all I would need is the drive and a couple tapes. As far as my self-professed corporate clone attitude, I'd consider taking a chance at the office on a new single-source backup product IF it looked WAY better than the competition AND was WAY cheaper. In many ways, VXA *does* look a little better to me than DDS-3 - BUT, for my particular requirements, when you include the media, it is more expensive, not at all cheaper. final buzzer sounds here Am I risk averse? Hell, yeah -- we are talking BACKUP here, after all, what could be a more risk-averse topic? -Steve -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Problems?: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
