Iomega Zip 250

Iomega's Zip 250 is a neat little gadget. Its cool blue, streamlined design looks pretty good, for a start. It's also very useful, as its 250Mb removable disks provide an affordable and convenient way of backing up important files from your PC.

This latest version of the Zip 250 looks the same as its predecessor, and the disks have the same capacity, but it does have one useful new feature. The original Zip 250 needed its own power supply, but this new version has been modified so that it can take its power directly from the USB port on your PC.

This is a small change, admittedly, but it makes the drive more convenient to set up as you've got fewer cables to worry about, and you get one of your power sockets back as well. It also makes it easier to share the drive between two or more PCs at home or in an office, as you can simply unplug the USB cable from one PC and plug it straight into another, without having to trail the power supply across the room each time.

The only minor complication arises if you want to connect the drive to a USB hub, rather than plugging it directly into a USB port on your PC itself. You'll need to make sure that the hub has its own power supply, as we found that an unpowered hub didn't provide enough power for the Zip drive as well as additional peripherals, such as keyboards and digital cameras. We had no problems at all when plugging it directly into a PC's built-in USB ports, though.

Zip disks are reasonably priced, costing about £50 for a four-pack that will provide 1Gb of storage space. A CD-RW might be more cost-effective for larger amounts of storage, but the Zip 250 is still an excellent option for home or small-business users who simply want a quick and easy way of backing up a few files every now and then.

Contact
Iomega 0800 973 194, www.iomega.com/europe