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At 04:29 AM 8/8/97 -0700, Don Perley wrote: >At 08:45 PM 8/7/97 -0700, Randal Whittle wrote: > >> SyQuest had their chance--I used their 105 MB removable (not the 135 MB >>that competed with the zip early on) and later their 270 MB removable >>(which I still have), but the media cost *way* too much. With Zip disks as >>low as $15 a piece and sold in packages like floppies (not to mention >>*looking* like floppies), they're hard to resist. > >Syquest 135 disks have always been about 3 for $45 to $50 (locally, not >mail order), which is roughly equal to zip for 35% more room and performance >more like a real hard drive. That doesn't sound like "*way* too much" to me. What meant was that SyQuest had been around for a long time beforehand with a small cartridge that held in excess of 100 MB--but the media was way too much. The 135 was a bit too late to the party, less convenient, more fragile, and (perhaps this is more important than anything)--they just never marketed it as well as the Zip was. >What Syquest was really missing that put Zip in the lead was a rad color plastic >case. I don't know if it was the cute blue case or not, but for whatever reason, the vast majority of people chose Zip over the SyQuest 135. Once that "installed base" came into being, the game was over. You'll notice that SyQuest doesn't make the 135 anymore. They abandoned it, then came out with the EZ-Flyer 250. The problem is that they didn't (or couldn't) make it cheap enough to win over potential Zip buyers. The media cost about the same per MB. I'd bet you money that if they brought out the 250 and made the cost of a cart. no more than $20, they'd have won over a lot of of potential Zip buyers. The SyJet has a lot better chance against the Jaz, but again--they're just too late to market on that one too. Jaz is far more popular. The early bird gets the worm, if it's done right. Zip isn't a performance marvel--but most people don't care that much. All they want is a decent level of storage (100 MB is decent) and they want it very cheap. They also want to be able to share it with their friends, which means something of a universal standard. Nothing has ever approached Zip in this last area. ------- Randal J. Whittle whittle@usc.edu (213) 740-7775 Director, Electronic Commerce Program Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California