Iomega ZipCD
During the 1990s, Iomega made its 100MB Zip disk a ubiquitous household
commodity, second only in popularity to the floppy disk. Due to some
serious technological limitations, however, Iomega's ZipCD CD-RW
drive isn't likely to hold the same sort of sway in the recordable
CD space.
This smart-looking external USB drive catches your attention twice: First, with its vivid purple colouring; second, with recording times that lagged far behind the other drives in this roundup. The ZipCD refused to burn CDs at its rated 4x speed, instead creating all its disks at 2x (a 60 minute audio CD took more than a half-hour to record.)
Since the drive comes with Adaptec's Easy CD Creator, it's easy to burn your own music CDs or create data CDs. Unfortunately, the slightly dated version of Adaptec software can't convert MP3 audio files to audio CD format, which limits the software's usefulness. The package also includes CD-labelling software from Avery and a program called QuickSync, which is great for backing up your PC.
Iomega's first CD-RW demonstrates a touch of promise and a touch of oversight. Hopefully, its next-generation drive will come with MP3 tools and burn disks a bit faster.
Iomega ZipCD
Company: Iomega
Ph: 02 9925 7700
Price: AU$659.
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