Iomega Zip 750

There's long been a battle over the replacement for floppy disks. While the floppy has steadfastly refused to roll over and die, Iomega has performed well with its Zip drives.

This next evolution of its product bumps capacity to a CD-beating 750Mb and increases transfer speeds by using USB 2. If you don't have USB 2 you don't need to worry, as the drive is fully compatible with original USB, but transfer rates are very much slower.

The drive will also read all media from Zip 100 and 250 drives but, strangely, will not write to the 100Mb disks.

The unit is squeezed into a surprisingly tough plastic case. Combine this with the rugged disks and you have a system that's made for being lugged around. Don't forget to take the external power supply with you as, unlike the Zip 100, the 750 can't pull enough power via USB to work.

You will also need to buy some disks, as Iomega doesn't bundle any with the drive. At £35 for three, they bump the total price of the drive up to £205.

However, Iomega tries to make up ground by bundling its IomegaWare software to automatically synchronise and backup files, as well as password protection for sensitive disks.

Unfortunately, we ran straight into trouble trying to get this to work. Under Windows XP the software crashed the computer every time we accessed it. Moving to a Windows 98 machine proved even worse, as the software wouldn't even install.

In the end we had to pay a visit to the website and download an older version of the software. This too proved to be problematic as the support section of the website directed us towards a version of IomegaWare that is incompatible with Windows XP. Fortunately, we resolved the problem by going straight to the software section of the site.

Once up and running we found the drive quick to react. File transfers fly over the USB 2 link but the device was also obtrusively loud when in full flight.

If the disks were cheaper and the software easier to get working then this would be a good product. As it stands, a CD-writer has the edge in terms of cost, flexibility and noise pollution.

Price: £170 (incl. VAT)

Contact: Iomega 020 7216 0003
www.iomega.co.uk

Also consider: PLEXTOR 48/24/48U
A fast and good-looking external USB 2 CD-RW. £220. Worth It.