The Fire Sale's Burning Like Napalm, But Still, Don't Delay!
Written: Jun 19 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cost/MB is astoundingly low!
Cons: Xfers bring your system to its knees, company's future questionable.
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| ogur's Full Review: SYQT SyQuest SparQ (SPARQ1AI-01) Drive |
Since January of last year, the future of Syquest has been a bit of an enigma. In November of 1998, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and, of course, a lot of people were left holding rebates and warranties that would never be honored.
Some money changed hands, and Syquest is now SYQT. Rebates are gone, kaput, sorry pal, file a bankruptcy claim. Warranty service, on the other hand, will cost you $25 for a Sparq Drive (still probably worth it), $12 for the cartridges (not worth it). Drivers are still available and being updated (just got my Win2K drivers!)
Napalm Burns Very Slowly, If You Didn't Know
I got my drive in the middle of last year, July or August, by redeeming some coupons and gift certificates online (total value was $90, I paid a fraction of that out of pocket). They were on an auction site, getting "Blown Out!!!" Since that time, I've seen them being Blown Out!!! on just about every site in the world you can think of where you can find closeout and discontinued merchandise. Ebay constantly has 20-30 minimum listed in their database. Keep in mind, we're nearly a FULL YEAR past when I bought mine, and this is still occurring.
It's not as if they're not moving any, I watch these auctions, people selling 20, 30, 40, 50, never having any left over unless they priced 'em too high. The SYQT website lists the internal at $230 and the external at $250. Riiiight. The internals typically sell on ebay for $40-70, the externals for $50-90. Worried about where to buy cartridges? No problem finding those either, just go to the same place. SYQT price? $60. Ebay price? Typically $10-20/ea (cheaper in higher quantities, of course).
But How Does It TASTE?
It's a shame to see that Syquest didn't really take over the market with their Sparq drives. Obviously a huge drain on R&D, they bet the farm and lost. Before they went bankrupt, these drives would run you around $150, and I had customers gladly snatching them up. Why? Because for about the same speeds as a Zip (not SCSI), at the same price as a Zip (at the time), you could store 10 times as much. On top of that, the disks were selling at $40/ea. Zip disks at the time were $10/ea in packs of 10 ($100 for 10 for you math-challenged individuals), making the cost per megabyte FAR lower for the Sparq than the Zip.
When I received my Sparq drive last year, I was working at a tech support company with a fractional T1 (really fast internet) line coming into it, and was allowed to bring in my drive and hook it up. A bunch of people had Zip drives, but everyone marvelled at my Sparq. The first time it spun up, it was fairly quiet, but still made a sound like a Honda rice rocket motorcycle accelerating and shifting gears. In a room full of tech support geeks, this made my Sparq an instant celebrity (I actually heard people stop mid-sentence and stand up just to look at this beauty!) Hooking it up to the NT 4.0 machines we were using was relatively effortless (I DID need administrator access, but that's not Syquest's fault), and I was up and leeching in no time.
Durability is not a problem, trust me. My drive has been through a lot, heat, impact, etc. Survival of the fittest is not an issue for this baby, and other than the time that it dropped hard enough to actually come apart (at the case's seam... a simple "snap!" put it back together, and it worked just fine), I haven't had any issues to be concerned about.
Gee, What A Critic... Are You On Happy Pills?
My only complaint is that while you are transferring to the Sparq
parallel port, your resources are sucked dry as a bone. The system drags essentially to a halt, and although the transfer is relatively fast, we're talking 1GB/disk here, and moving off a couple hundred megs worth of data means waiting 20 or 30 minutes, with very little use of your computer available to you. In the situation at the tech support joint, this wasn't really a problem. About 45 minutes before my shift was going to end, I'd start transferring all the stuff I'd downloaded to the sparq, then hop on the machine next to me and use it. However, most of us are not so lucky inside our homes. Maybe tell it to transfer files and go take a shower or offer to cook for your spouse or something else you haven't done in a long, long time. One point I want to make here is that you can run things directly off of the sparq drive with little difficulty. I frequently played MP3s directly from the sparq with no performance decrease whatsoever.
(Note - the internal is about 5-7 times faster.)
One last note - when the disk ejects, WATCH OUT!!! This thing has more force behind it than most NASA missions, and is just as unpredictable. I typically block the doorway with one finger, so that the disk doesn't go flying out, landing on the floor, and suffering from some bad sectors (I HAVE had this happen, but I can't blame the drive or disk for it, it was my own fault for playing the "how far will it shoot?" game (a note - pretty darned far). The disks consist basically of a single hard drive platter in a plastic casing, so handle them like you would a sensitive hard drive.
That's it. Go on and get yours... the storage space is phenomenal for the cost, especially now. Go ahead and buy up some disks while you're at it, 'cuz you never know. In either case, you can thank me later when you're moving your entire MP3 collection to your Sparq, freeing up precious hard drive space for... umm... MORE MP3S!!!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ogur
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Member: Brian Hogan
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Reviews written: 65
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
The New Epinions - Why didn't I take the BLUE pill?
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