A large coalition of companies have been working on the latest in high capacity disk technology. Iomega was a member of this group of misguided companies but pulled out. They came up with the popular Zip drive (see Tek). Why did they leave?

The coalition was working on a drive known as the LS120. Its is backward compatible in that it takes the old 1.44Mb floppy disks as well as new 120Mb disks. But Iomega felt that the way things were going, the drive would be much slower than it need be. The Zip drive that they came up with independently was ten times faster than the LS120. Yes TEN times faster. It was extremely rugged. The disks, while only holding 100Mb, were quite sufficient and strong enough to be posted.

The Zip drive came out at least six months before the first LS120 drives and has been a hit. It has become the ad hoc standard due to its popularity and affordability. The LS120 will never catch on, just like IBM's misguided but technically sound 2.8Mb disks. Backward compatability is becoming less and less of an issue, while speed is becoming ever more critical.

Sorry folks, but Zip is here to stay!

Jeep

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