129.00 for IOMEGA usb zip250 good?

[TGBYR]

I can only find this for 129.00 at staples w/ a 30off150 coupon. Is there anywhere else that have it for cheaper?

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[shotime1]

Maybe I am just in a questioning mood tonight, but why do these things still exist? They are hardly cheaper than a cdburner, they are a hell of a lot slower, and the media costs a hell of a lot more and stores a hell of a lot less. AND, if that isn't enough, EVERY computer has a cd-rom drive but not every computer has a ZIP drive...

[calng]

I can tell you why they are still around. People, especially businesses use them for back-up. And people use them for school. The Colleges in my area all have an internal Zip drive, so you can download stuff and copy them to the zip disk. Which is more convenient than an 1.44MB disk. So, just because you do not use zip disks, other people do. The demand for zip drives are still high, that is why the price hasn't really lowered that much. Also, for you can delete things on a zip disk, but on a CDR you can not. And it takes very long to burn something onto CD. And for documents, and little files, zip disks are good for them. Why would you want to burn 700 KB files onto a CDR? For one thing, I consider that a waste, and sometimes there are problems because you may not burn files all at once. And burning at multiple times on a disk may burn correctly, but sometimes it can not be read. Zip disks are less hassle for the little things, and CDR's are good for the big things.

[jstreet]

Until CD ReWritable technology becomes as fast and easy as Zips are, those antiquated Zips are still going to be around. If I put files on a CD-RW disc, I have to ensure first that the destination drive supports MultiRead technology (most do, but nevertheless...) and then that it has software to read the packets and whatnot. "Burning" (actually, in the case of CD-RW, heating and magnetizing), takes a long time with most drives, whereas zips are much speedier.

I completely agree, though - I hate my Zip drive. I've already had one die and take valuable files with it due to the well-known and oft-denied "Click of Death" scenario. The capacity is horribly. It's noisy. In my case, it looks like an iMac because I didn't have room for anything but a USB. But, it's the only option for lugging around huge graphic files between home and school. I'll admit, they're handy for snagging a 50mb photoshop image I've been working on on one of the blue & white G3's and bringing it home to my PC to continue on, but it is so maddening when I want a high-capacity drive (ex: backing up my PC before I reformat), and I would need 168 zip disks to do the task.
-Ben