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Iomega Ships 35GB 'Son of Jaz'
Hamster Of Death writes "Iomega has begun selling its 'son of Jaz' removable hard drive, Rev. Pitched as an alternative to tape back-up rigs, Rev provides 35GB of uncompressed storage capacity per 2.5in removable disk. The disk is mounted inside a 1 x 0.8 x 0.8cm cartridge, and yields a 25MBps transfer rate - eight times faster than DDS-4 tape, Iomega claims."
Did you hear something?...
Click of death.
http://www.kontentdesign.com/
This product has been in development since 1974. They have just finished their reliability tests and are now bringing the product to market.
An Iomega disk is an alternative to a tape drive for data backup in much the same way that carbon dioxide is an alternative to oxygen for mammalian respiration.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What is that big "sideways capital I" shaped bulge on the top of the unit? Some sort of sound damping layer so you can't hear any clicks?
I've got one of those mounted at /dev/null. Blazing fast, too.
It's been reported in the OEM market that Iomega has not only replaced, but upgraded the famous Zip Click-Of-Death(TM?) for their new Son of Jaz model. It seems that when my SoJ disks start to fail, the device will begin playing soulful tunes from the always enjoyable John Coltrane.
Iomega may not understand market pricing, quality assurance or customer service. It's good to know that they have figured out something that their customers have known for a while now - when you lose data, soothing music helps ease the pain!
I remember those CDRW drives fondly. They made a series with a power adaptor that was a DIN connector that amazingly fit into the the PS/2 port on computers. The company that I was working for ordered about 150 of those drives and sent them out to our traveling reps with laptops. And it wasn't long before the phone calls started... "I just plugged in my laptop and a puff of smoke came out the keyboard!" What color is the power adaptor that you used ma'am? "Purple!" *SMACK* Good times....
Well, I guess the person who modded you as flamebait has never experienced the click of death in an Iomega Zip drive or had the glorious responsibility of managing one of their flakey Win 2000 NAS products.
Or even the incredibly poor quality of one of their original Jaz drives.
I was suckered into buying one when I went to university. A year later I heard that KMFDM had lost an entire album's worth of music to a Jaz disk dying, but I figured it was just bad luck.
Then I lost the entire contents of one of my disks (and the disk itself) when the drive at my part time job ate it. Losing a $100 disk is bad, but it's even worse when you're a student on a budget.
That was the only time I've ever lost my temper and destroyed a piece of computer hardware. I did learn something funny, though, which is that if you throw a Jaz drive at a concrete floor, it will literally explode into various components instead of just breaking apart.
I also learned that it doesn't necessarily make a good impression on new employees when the sysadmin runs into the lobby, screams "you motherFUCKER!" and then breaks something loudly.
I think I gave my own drive away. I hope it didn't do anything bad to whoever ended up with it.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I live in Roy, UT, where Iomega's world headquarters used to be located. They still have larges offices there. When my Zip drive died, I called them, and they eventually sent me a new one. The wanted to charge me a nominal amount (like 50% of the original price). I can't remember if I talked them out of it or not. They sent me a new one, along with a box to send the old one back via UPS. Since I lived close to their offices, I thought I'd save them the cost of shipping the old one back. I drove to their office, and asked them to take the defective one. After 10 or 15 minutes of people asking other people what to do, they eventually threw their hands up in the air and told me I would have to go and send it via UPS anyway.
"Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee." --Bender
Okay, quick look on the net - http://www.pricewatch.com/, and I see USB hard drives with 40GB of space for under $60. Why buy it from Iomega for more?
/Sarcasm
You aren't taking into account Iomega's value-added features, such as slower transfer rates, propietary software interfaces, and generally shoody construction. When you do, you can see they have the clear advantage.
What are these 'floppy disks' you speak of?