SyQuest and Iomega battle to provide the next removable-cartridge standard.
Rik Myslewski
THE HANDWRITING IS ON THE WALL: It's time for a new industry standard for fast, inexpensive, high-capacity removable-cartridge systems -- and storage giants SyQuest and Iomega both claim that they will set that standard. Both are poised to release stylish, affordable, 1-GB-or-better removable-cartridge systems: SyQuest's SyJET and Iomega's Jaz. One will succeed. One won't.
A standard must be ubiquitous, attached to the Mac of every desktop publisher, service bureau, and print shop. That's pretty much the case with SyQuest systems today -- and SyQuest would be quite happy, thank you, if that dominance were to continue.
But it may not -- and won't if Iomega has any-thing to say about it. Although SyQuest is justly proud of its massive installed base of drives, those zillion drives and a buck will get you a cup of Starbucks when the SyJET and Jaz systems arrive this spring: None of SyQuest's old drives will be able to read from or write to the new SyJET cartridges, and the new SyJET drives won't read or write anything other than SyJET cartridges. We're starting from scratch.
That's understandable. Techno-logical leaps often orphan earlier products. But this paradigm shift will level the playing field -- and the battle's about to begin: Iomega and SyQuest, the SyJET and the Jaz, mano a mano.
The measurable differences be-tween the two compact, attractive SCSI devices are few. The most ob-vious is capacity: SyJET cartridges will be available in 650-MB and 1.3-GB sizes; Jaz cartridges weigh in at 540 MB and 1 GB. SyQuest claims that the SyJET will have a slight performance advantage over the Iomega Jaz, but we take a skeptical view of performance claims until actual systems are available for testing. Prices should be about identical, with internal drives costing around $500 and externals about $100 more, low-capacity car-tridges around $65 and high-capacity cartridges near $100.
So, with price and performance essentially equal and capacity similar, what will tip the balance? Will loyal SyQuest users simply follow the SyQuest label and happily move over to SyJET systems? Or will SyQuest's less-than-warm-and-cuddly reputation, still not dispelled after the reliability problems of a few years back, drive users away? Will the excite-ment engendered by the success of Iomega's 100-MB Zip system translate into a head start for the Jaz system? Or will concerns over the Jaz system's steadily slipping release date, coupled with frustration over the early lack of availability of Zip systems, cause users to doubt Iomega's ability to support the huge volume an industry standard requires?
It's up to you to decide. Vote with your check-books, your charge cards, and your purchase or-ders. As soon as the external versions of each drive become available (Iomega is already providing internal Jaz drives to Power Computing, Micro-Net, and ProMAX), MacUser Labs will run them through their paces and we'll give you our rec-ommendation. Until then, we advise that you sift carefully through the hype and hoopla and think about how ineffably cool it's going to be to have inexpensive, fast, unlimited storage at a gig or more a pop.
