On Wed, 13 Jan 1999 15:07:19 EST, Scj9000@xxxxxxx jammed all night, and by
sunrise was overheard remarking:
> In a message dated 1/13/99 1:38:20 PM Eastern Standard Time, omtech@xxxxxxxxx
> writes:
> << Last week I was in an Office Depot store and they were "still" selling
> the SyQuset Sparq for $199, while others had been passing them through @
> $30 - $49.
> John >>
> I read on this list weeks ago that such bargains were abounding, but after
> scouring Virginia and DC area high and low I have not found any that are even
> discounted... CompUSA, Staples, Office Depot are all still selling the units
> at normal retail.
Don't expect anything different from the normal retailers. They're
usually too level headed for this kind of price cutting based on panic,
and I rather doubt that most of these kinds of chains are even able to
make these decisions locally.
> I asked the manager at the Richmond,Va CompUSA about the
> availability, and he says the warehoused quantity is more than sufficient for
> reordering and that they have been told that a "private source" purchased
> Syquest as of December 28.
That would be incorrect. According to C-Net yesterday, IoMega has
announced that they are buying most of SyQuest:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,30869,00.html
This includes equipment, product stock, and Malaysian assets (including
a plant) for $9.5 million. They are not buying any accounts or debt.
This is seen as a way to head off the full continuance of SyQuest, if
bought by another company (much as I was saying a day or two ago), and
an economical way to end their patent suit against SyQuest.
There's no statement from IoMega about which products will be continued,
but SparQ doesn't seem too likely to me. It's basically the same idea as
their Jaz 1GB drive, only since it's based on single platter discs,
rather than dual platter in the Jaz, it can be made for less (both drive
and discs). However, if they continued this, it would either kill off the
Jaz 1GB (and, perhaps, future upgrades to the Jaz 2GB drives), or compete
too strongly against their ZIP 250M discs.
Now, you might argue, who cares as long as they make the sale, and
that's somewhat true. But I suspect some of their longterm strategies,
like establishing the ZIP as an industry standard, will benefit from its
standing as along as possible in the market.
I suspect they may adopt or adapt some of the Quest (4.something GB cart
drive) technology, but even there, it may be better for their world to
hold out on a 4GB product until they can offer a Jaz-compatible version.
They have something of a franchise already in the Jaz disc family, and
extending that upward may keep people who might otherwise pick something
like writeable DVD (if those bozos ever hammer out one reasonable
standard).
> I doubt serioiusly all the naysaying tho..17 yr old
> companies with technology of this importance just don't fade away.
That's exactly what we thought about Commodore when I worked there. Of
course, it was a 25+ year old company, once doing 1 billion/year in
business, and it had the 3rd most popular platform in the personal
computing industry, the Amiga. How could it die? There are so many ways.
If it doesn't seem to make sense given the state of the industry, it's
probably some kind of internal screwup (as in the Commodore case). The
industry probably won't let Number One die, but they don't much care
about Numbers Two on down.
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG | http://www.metabox.de
Be Dev #2024 | NB851 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One
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