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In the piece of UCLA where I live, we have had eleven ZIP drives since
mid-summer 1995.  With the exception of one which was dropped (and repaired
free under warranty), we've had no problems with them.  One of the reasons
I'm so pleased wth them is that this solves a huge problem we had of moving
larger than one-floppy-disk-size datasets between Macs and PCs when neither
the Macs nor the PCs in question were connected to the network or had a
modem.
 
One thing that I'll be starting to do shortly is order computers with the
ZIP drive as the A-drive.  This accomplishes two things:  (a) I can run any
operating system I want at any time I want using all the same hardware
(maybe not a concern for you, but a biggie for me) and (b) I'd MUCH prefer
having the ZIP drive so it can be booted from for instances when things go
to ---- in a handbasket.  For these computers, I will order 1.44MB floppy
drives as their B-drives.  One caution, having ZIP as bootable means it
must be internal and that the computer manufacturer use the BIOS that
allows the ZIP to be bootable (particularly this last part may sound
omnious, but already these are available for most of the popular PC
operating systems (DOS/Win 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, Linux, and OS/2).
 
HTH.
 
virginia
 
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