April 21 - April 28

IOMEGA ZIP 250 USB by Alessandro Cancian How many among you remember the criticism thrust towards the iMac when the computer was launched some years ago? The question that many friends, and my wife among them, kept asking was: "Nice. What about the floppy drive?" Personally, I had abandoned floppy disks years earlier. Working with graphics, the introduction of ZIP drives had been a blessing for me. Times now are much more progressive, and ZIP disks have taken the place of the now-quite obsolete floppies. The Internet also contributed a lot to their diffusion: MP3 files, images or video clips require storage devices with capacities well above 1.44 MB. With no fear of exaggeration, one can say that ZIP drives ("zips"?) are becoming the new de facto standard storage devices in most computers. A leader among storage device manufacturers, Iomega offers a wide range of drives. We recently tested their latest creation, ZIP 250 USB. First of all, lets talks about its look: fabulous. The ultra-thin drive, built with transparent blue plastic, fits easily in your pocket or briefcase, so you can take it wherever the business wants you. The 250 USB is perfectly compatible, both for reading and writing, with 100 MB zips, and requires a computer (PC or Mac, it makes no difference) equipped with a USB port. Installation on my Mac laptop only took plugging its cable into the port; the computer automatically recognized the drive and the zip was mounted on my desktop. This is what they mean by plug-and-play. No software installation was needed, although a CD must be used if you want to make use of the software bundled with the drive. Installation on a PC proved slightly more laborious, requiring the update of some Win98 drivers. In terms of performance, the ZIP 250 USB came out as noticeably faster than an external 100 MB ZIP unit, but slightly slower than another equipped with a SCSI port. Reading and writing are decidedly faster when using a 250 MB zip, and performance degrades visibly when using a 100 MB disk. In general performance seemed better with Macs than with PCs, but I believe this to be due to a different management of USB ports in the two systems. With PC laptops, lacking a USB port, Iomega offers an optional PCMCIA card that enables a ZIP drive to be connected, thus eliminating the need for an external power supply, which is real good news for people often on the road. As far as cost effectiveness is involved, however, even though ZIP 250 is a very good product, I think its 100 MB version gives a better cost/benefit ratio. ZIP 250s good portability can in some cases represent an ideal incentive for those in need of a lightweight device. In many situations, youll be likely to deal with 100 MB disks, much more common, and this would limit the usefulness of the bigger drive. On a market where ZIP 100 MB gets the lions share for fast file transfer and JAZ fills the need for larger projects, ZIP 250 USB comes out as an ideal solution for a very limited set of users. Thats a pity. For further information you can visit the site www.iomega.com.

 

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