Iomega Buys Out Syquest

bob writes "CNET is reporting that Iomega bought out the assets of Syquest. This ends a litigation suit between the two companies, but it's unknown is Iomega will continue with the Syquest product line. Check out the story. "

Dan Gillmor comments

[gavinhall]

Posted by The Famous Brett Watson:

Dan Gillmor has some things to say about Iomega [sjmercury.com], prompted in part by their purchase of SyQuest. The SyQuest 88MB cartridge drive was one of the best purchases I ever made. I don't use it much anymore, but I get nostalgic thinking about it and the Amigas it roved.

Buyouts as a means to an end?

[Kyt]

It never ceases to amaze me how often this happens - companies involved in lawsuits that end up gobbling up the companies they're fighting against. Makes one wonder how long it'll take Gates to buy the DOJ... "The United States Department of Justice: Who do you want to sue today?"

Syjet Drive

[John Allsup]

The one thing I like about zip disks is their robustness -- also the one thing why I wish those 120Mb 'superfloppy' things would go away.

I've only ever had one problem with a zip disk, and that's the inability to reformat them to the correct size when they've been incorrectly formatted (this due to the problems getting 'doze to correctly handle the internal zip drive)

Sigh...

[WizardDan]

The SparQ was really ahead of its time. Although it wouldn't make sense for Iomega to continue producing a drive which directly competes with its flagship product at ten times the capacity, one can only hope.
Tech support is another thing-if I go pick up one of the SparQs sitting at CompUSA and something goes wrong, does Iomega cover it? It's a tough situation.

~Dan

I've learned my lesson

[Bitscape]

Last summer I bought a SparQ drive because of the good price and high capacity. That's the last time I get buy a removable storage device for which the medium can only be manufactured by one company. Long live open hardware!

--Bitscape
Paradise: gcc, a 12 pack of Josta, a pile of cds, and a long weekend.

Syjet Drive

[Miskatonic]

For what it's worth, Jaz drives are quite prone to data destruction. My internal Jaz drive is a total piece of garbage. I've had around 4 partitions destroyed, and two cartridges physically go bad. The drive broke down once under warranty, and it was serviced by Iomega; lately it sounds funny and I've just stopped relying on the thing.

SyQuest's tech support was MUCH better than Iomega's. In order to get an RMA for my defective drive, I had to call long distance and wait on hold for half an hour. Iomega's website is a cute promotional thing with lousy tech help. SyQuest's website was chock full of info. Once when trying to resolve a problem with my Jaz and SCSI adapter, I found the information I was looking for not on Iomega's website, not on Adaptec's website, but on SyQuest's website!

But anyway, fixed storage has gotten so cheap now that my opinion is to hell with removable magnetic storage, flaky media, and funny cartridges that go obsolete in months. It's easier and cheaper just to buy a new hard disk.

And so it seems that SyQuest goes down as the next in a long line of computer companies to make excellent products, and to be completely incompetantly marketed.

(Yes I had an Amiga, and we're all still bitter. :P )

One could hope...

[jridley]

One could hope that they'll use IOMega's marketing department, and SyQuest's technology, but I'm sure there's no chance. More likely they take SyQuest out back and bury it; I'm pretty sure IOMega doesn't know good technology even when they buy it.

NOOOOOOOOOO!

[Dion]

Aol buys Netscape, and now Iomega buys SyQuest, what the hell is going on?

I just hope that the tech-impaired Iomega has enough brains to dump zip and continue the sparQ and EZ lines... hmm, maybe I should go and horde all the sparQ drives and media I can get my hands on right now.

apparently not the case

[slapshot]

I read that Iomega bought the Syquest assets, and not the company name, etc.
"We want to make sure people are clear, it's not an outright purchase".
"Iomega did not buy the company".
-John Chen spokesman for Iomega

SparQ vs Zip

[takis]

Here in Belgium, Zip drives and SparQs cost the same. Which one is better in my opinion? 100MB vs 1GB? My SparQ is a lot faster then my Zipdrive too. I've had a lot of trouble with my Zipdrive so far, and NO problems with my SparQ. The only thing good about Iomega is their marketing. In the shop where I bought my SparQ, NOONE was looking at the equally priced SparQ. They were all buying Zips.
Can't understand that...
I sure hope Syquest will survive...

Greetz, Takis