Product Description

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology is the emerging standard for connecting anything to your computer. This state-of-the-art interface makes good on the long-touted promise of simple plug-and-play capability, moving beyond traditional limitations and annoyances of the SCSI or parallel port interfaces. Now, USB-equipped Macintosh and PCs running Microsoft Windows 98 can begin utilizing USB advantages available from the sleek translucent blue Zip USB drive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20469 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Iomega
• Model: 11172
• Platform: Mac OS 9 and below

Features

• Ultrathin, mobile design
• Compatible with USB-enabled PC and Macintosh systems
• Compatible with both 100 MB and 250 MB Zip disks
• Up to 900 KBps transfer rate
• Includes IomegaWare 2.1 with Quik Sync instant backup utility

Amazon.com Product Description
The Zip 250 USB drive offers an ultrathin, mobile design that meets the high-capacity storage needs for both PC and Mac users. At an inch thick and weighing just under a pound, the Zip 250 USB drive can accompany the most demanding mobile computer user. Connect the drive conveniently with the industry-standard USB port. Mobile users can connect with a host-powered PCMCIA interface.

From Winmag®
The Iomega Zip drive is the low-cost removable storage leader-and Iomega's two latest offerings, the Zip 250 (a SCSI device) and a USB version of the Zip 100, should help maintain its popularity.The USB drive is designed for Win98; you install the drivers and IomegaWare software first, then reboot your system. We got it installed and performing without a hitch.

We tested the SCSI version of the Zip 250. The 250MB disks will sell for about $100 for a six pack, about the same as a 10 pack of Zip 100 disks. The drive works with the 100MB disks, but sacrifices some speed in doing so.

We compared both drives' performance against an internal IDE Zip 100 drive (0.32MBps). The Zip 100 copied our files at 0.25MBps. The Zip 250's SCSI interface helped it achieve good speeds (0.52MBps) with a 250MB disk for which it's optimized. The performance of the Zip 250 drive earns it a spot on our WinList.

Customer Reviews

Choosing between the USB and SCSI versions of this product
The Zip 250 is perhaps the most rational choice for anyone looking to bridge the gap between Macintosh and Windows based machines. In both the SCSI and USB forms, it invites portability. It's the ideal solution for anyone who creates anything but video on one platform for use on the other. (For cross-platform video editing, a Jaz drive is more appropriate.)

It's also great if you're living on a budget. Though your initial purchase is more expensive than buying a Zip 100, you'll spend far less on disks. Since 250mb disks are essentially the same price as 100mb ones, your overall storage costs will be cheaper in the long term.

Perhaps more importantly, you won't have to abandon your existing Zip library to upgrade. The product's much vaunted backwards compatibility with Zip 100s is real and mostly trouble free. The only glitch with it is that if you're trying to save large (over 15mb) files to a Zip 100, it will take substantially-even painfully--longer than if you were using a Zip 100 drive. For many people, this won't be a consideration. But if you have large multimedia files in your 100mb disk library, you might consider transferring them over to 250mb disks. To put it simply, I definitely wouldn't recommend either version of this product if you plan to use only 100mb disks. The real question, though, is whether you should get the SCSI or the USB version. Out of the box, the SCSI external is twice as fast as the USB, but less portable. To use the SCSI version, you've got to have SCSI cards installed in every machine on which you're going to use the drive. Virtually no computers, PC or Mac, come with pre-installed SCSI cards, so you'll immediately have to spend money to bring your computer(s) up to speed. And you'll have to deal with the fact that most unknown computers won't have a SCSI card.

Meanwhile, the entirely more portable USB version, though slower by default, can be brought up to the same speed as the SCSI. With the addition of a FireWire adaptor, there's no difference between the two drives. All Macs since the G3, and an increasing number of PCs come with FireWire built-in. And if you happen to encounter a computer without FireWire, you can easily remove the adaptor and go back to the default USB connection-which isn't exactly "slow", anyway.

With either form, you're going to have to spend some more money to get both top speeds *and* portability. If you don't plan to travel outside computers you already know have SCSI capability, it's probably cheaper to go with a SCSI Zip. But if you want the fastest, largest-capacity Zip drive that you can use on the highest percentage of computers, buy a USB Zip 250, and add on a FireWire adaptor.

Another Winner for Iomega.
This is my third Zip drive but my first 250Mb and of course my first USB. The USB interface worked fine on my desktop (Win 98) BUT the installation also enabled the never-before usable USB port on my laptop (Win 95b). I wasn't expecting this. I was going to buy the optional PCMCIA interface - but this saves me the forty bucks. I didn't look at the transfer rate but it seems even faster than my 100 Mb internal Zip (ATAPI interface) on one of my 'puters. Very fast! Recommended!

Fast and easy to carry
I was impressed with the ZIP-250 USB from the moment I unpacked it. The new design is a big improvement over the old ZIP-100 design. The drive is much smaller and lighter, and it comes with a small soft plastic stand which allows you to put the drive on its side. Even the power adapter is smaller and lighter than the old ones. The only disadvantage of the drive's design is that its light weight makes it nearly impossible to put a disk in without using both hands. This can be a little awkward depending on where you keep the drive.

Data transfer is very fast (as one would expect from a USB connection) compared to the parallel port version of the zip drive. I had no problem reading my old ZIP-100 disks on the new drive.

The ZIP-250 PC installation is easy- Load the software, reboot, and plug in the drive. The included software also comes with plenty of useful features such as Disk Copy and a program for scheduling backups of important files.

Only one real complaint- The included software adds a bunch of iomega applications to the windows startup list. This tacks a few extra seconds onto your boot time, in addition to opening an annoying application menu every time windows starts. I disabled these items in the msconfig.exe startup list after I got sick of them.

Overall, the ZIP-250 USB is a great buy. The 250MB capacity is great for backing up important data, and the compact, lightweight design makes it ideal for moving large files from one computer to another.