HIT: latest on Zip drives

[Nancy Kantar <KantarN@AOL.COM>]

LATEST  OPINIONS ON  ZIP DRIVES- 8/31/95:

Many thanks to those who answered about the Zip Drives.  Opinions are posted
below.  Guess I'll have to try it myself now, I do like the idea of having
"unlimited  space" instead of being limited to 270 MB and paying $100 extra
at that.

From my computer guru at home:  The iomega drive is a magneto optical
drive; it doesn't work on the same principle as hard drive.  It's great
for back up and transportion of large files, but is considerably slower
than a regular hard drive and is not used as a working drive when using
your computer. The price of hard drives for macs have dropped so low that
you can pick up a full gigabyte drive for less than $400. This is ten
times the capacity at only twice the price. (By the way, my *guru* has an
Iomega Zip and uses it for back up and transportion. He already has a gig
drive and is looking to upgrade to three gigs because he is in Graphic
Arts and starting to need more space, considering his average file size
is 200 MB.

Janet Dean   jdean@brahms.udel.edu  (or try jdean@udel.edu)
Library Media Specialist   (or)
Richardson Park Elem. School  jdean@dpi1.k12.state.de.us
Wilmington, DE 19804


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I just bought a zip drive and I love it..it solved all my space problems,
and it was easy to hook up and use. I bought it rather than a permanent
one because it was cheaper.  I think the more expensive ones are faster,
but since I"m using an LCII that's not an issue, since the computer
itself is none to fast.  I like the removeable disks..I've got my CD
software on one, my games on another, my kids programs on a third.


                           Guusje Moore
                 Librarian, Housman Elementary School
                           Houston, Texas
                          guusje@tenet.edu
===========================
 As someone who uses the electronic file cabinet, I really love optical
floppy discs as a way to store information. I was never sold on Syquest
drives due to their high failure rate. Though I have not had a lot of
experience with Zip drives, both myslef and my technologist have been using
them for some time with no problems. I find the small footprint of the drive
helps as well. I have ordered 10 for this school year, two in each lab for
students to use with discs purchased at the bookstore.
Steve Baule
Coordinator of Information Services
Glenbrook South High School
Glenview, IL 60025
baules@aol.com
========================
Your techie is wrong. The Zip is a much better way to go. It saved my
life this summer. We had a break-in and our library file was destoyed on
our file server. Luckily I had backed up on Zip cartridges and had put
several in safe places. The Zip Drive is very easy to install and very fast.
It is much better than Syquest or other hard drives. The only problem is
that you might have to wait several weeks to get one. The demand for them
is overwhelming.

Brad Riffel                             riffel@tenet.edu
Media Specialist                        BradR19@aol.com
River Road High School                  W-806-383-8786
Rt. 9 Box 1                             H-806-359-0860
Amarillo, Tx. 79108
=============================
I have a Zip drive at home and at school and I love it.  It is very fast,
and a great way to transport work.  Last year I did a multimedia production
with our fifth grades.  The back up of their work filled 20 high density
disks - what a pain.  I can fit six such projects onto one Zipdisk.

I appreciate the portability - the project can easily be shown in the
classroom or on any Mac with the Zip software.  I still back things up on
the hard drive though.  I always want two copies of everything important
and would be reluctant to give up adequate hard drive space.

Karen

   Karen A. Coy, Library Media Specialist    "I'm a great believer in luck,
       Greensview Elementary School            and I find the harder I work
   Upper Arlington, Ohio   614-487-5051        the more I have of it."
       kcoy@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu             -Thomas Jefferson

===============================
I can't post to LM_NET, so feel free to post this in a hit if you like.

The big difference is speed.  The Zip drive is much slower than a hard
drive.  It's not meant as "another hard drive", but more like "a big
floppy".  It's great for archiving things that you don't use very often,
such as big pictures or distributions of applications downloaded from the
net, or archived correspondence and email.  However, for actual
applications, there's no substitute for a real hard drive.

A big advantage of the Zip drives is that it may make you more likely to
make backups of your hard drive.  It's worlds easier than making backups on
floppy, and is more manageable than streaming tape.  I know that that I've
been a good deal more religious in my backups since I got mine for my PC at
home.

You really can't go wrong with the price.  $200 + 3x$15 = $250 gets you 300
Megs of storage, with additional disks at 15 cents/MB.

So, if shuffling stuff off to offline Zip cartridges will free up the drive
space on your main drive, get a Zip drive.  If you still need all that
storage available at one time, then you'll probably want to look at a
bigger hard drive.

Hope this helps,
Andy Lester
alester@fsc.follett.com
============================
I don't have the Zip yet, but I have talked to our technology coordinator a
few days ago.  She had purchased one and was finding it very useful.  She
indicated it takes up very little space and is very portable.  She can take
it with her as she moves from building to building and can have the software
and datafiles she needs with her.

I guess your choice may depend on how you plan to use the drive.  If it's
always going to be used in one place buy an external hard drive, but if you
want to move it from computer to computer or between home and work buy the
Zip.

If you learn anything really interesting, please post your findings to the
net.

Good luck!

Kay Maynard
Canton High School
Canton, IL
KayM830175@aol.com
======================