Woop!

Post #11,939 by inthane-chan 10/5/01 12:47:06 PM Reply	Woop! About damn time. Now, if only they had something in place to really replace it. I like the idea of CDRW taking it's place, but Iomega (PTUI! That bunch of CRAP!) will probably win with their proprietary Zip drives... "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #11,942 by Another Scott 10/5/01 1:20:14 PM Reply	Zip drives won't win, IMO. Too bulky, cartridges too expensive with too little capacity. For the near term, USB drives will be a "must have" option. As combo CD-RW/DVD drives become cheaper, they'll become standard. I see that (rather slow and expensive) CD-RW/DVD-RW drives are avaiable now... Cheers, Scott.
Post #11,948 by inthane-chan 10/5/01 1:49:36 PM Reply	The problem is, once again, the installed base. Had this problem when I was working at the EPA. People wanted to back up their documents to hardcopy, and to do so, they wanted to use ZIP drives, not CDRW. Why? Because ZIP is everywhere. No rational reason, it's just cooler. Even though it costs more, is bulkier, has reliability issues, and has only a single source... I made those arguments many times, and nobody there listened to me. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #11,954 by Andrew Grygus 10/5/01 2:05:03 PM Reply	From what I understand of DVD-RWs . . . . is they can't write a real DVD, so the disks can only be read in a compatible DVD-RW drive. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #11,971 by inthane-chan 10/5/01 3:12:10 PM Reply	True of some. The DVD-RAM drives wrote their own proprietary format. However, (and I might be getting this backwards - DVD-RAM might be the actual format) DVD-RW DOES write DVD-readable formatted disks that all DVD players can read. However, all the public DVD burners are "crippled" - they can only write reduced-capacity disks, to prevent the public from copying DVDs. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #12,019 by Meerkat 10/5/01 8:31:16 PM Reply	Maybe not crippled, but single-layered From what I've learnt of the 'Superdrive' in the PowerMacs, it'll only store an hour of video because the discs are single-layered, and the DVD encoding software uses the maximum bitrate all the time, meaning you can only get about an hour of video on to each DVD. On and on and on and on, and on and on and on goes John.
Post #12,209 by dmarker2 10/8/01 10:01:28 AM Reply	Re: I have dumped zip in favour of 2.5 in USB disks Fit in my pocket - use just a USB cable for data & power - work on all USB computers. My model doen't even require a driver to be installed it just works. I pay $US 30 for the disk case then add in a 2.5 in drive - paid 110 $ US for a 20GB IBM 2.5 in drive - this is a great way to transport data. I bought 2 more cases & now use my older 2.5 in disks (3.1GB & 6.2GB) for same purpose. These piss on the old ZIPs for cost & simplicity. Cheers Doug Marker (PS Shops here are full of them now - typically $US 50-60)
Post #12,241 by inthane-chan 10/8/01 12:31:00 PM Reply	That's crippled in my book. Apparently, the DVD consortium, in an attempt to avoid the CD burner debacle, specified that only the single-layer burners would be released to the average consumer - in order to guarantee that "we the peepul" would not be able to copy Hollywood releases. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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