🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3tmr53$kop@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, bootstrap1@aol.com
(Bootstrap1) wrote:

> jcgroves@netspace.net.au (John Groves) wrote:
> 
> > Before Zip, Mac users probably were not able to buy external storage
> >capacity as cheaply as PC users. Extra hard drive capacity seems to have
> >been significantly cheaper for PC users, at least partly due to the wide
> >range of IDE drives available for the PC.  Mac users also do not have
> >access to low cost tape backup systems, which are common for the PC. 
> 
> This part of your hypothesis is wrong.  Mac users can buy extra storage
> capacity as cheaply as PC users.  APS is selling a 1080 MB internal
> Quantum SCSI drive for $430.  Ads in the back of the latest PC World list
> the same 1080 MB Quantum internal drive (presumably IDE) for PCs for $519.
>  I suspect it may have dropped somewhat, but I haven't seen any PC
> mail-order company selling a 1080 MB Quantum mechanism for better than
> $430.
> 
> Nathan Tennies
> Bootstrap Enterprises Inc

No to be perfectly fair, you can buy PC (IDE) storage cheaper than SCSI
storqage.  Although the savings can be fairly modest when comparing the
cheapest dealers (less than 5%) it is a hell of a lot easier to obtain
cheap IDE drives than cheap SCSI drives (for the latter you will almost
certainly need to mail order; for the earlier I can walk out and buy
one at a rock-bottom price in the next 5-min).  In any case, I would
agree that the difference is not very large, and you won't need to take up
a slot to add a drive on a Mac or spend the next 6 hours cursing about how
it doesn't work because something is misconfigured on your PC. 

The Zip may not be as popular because you need to add a card (usually) to
get it to work with a PC (unless you use parallel which is just stupid).
However, this only jacks the price to about $250, as I think the SCSI card
is really cheap... In any case I think the perception is false, I think
there are many many Zips (most of them) being sold to PC users.

-- 
STEPHAN ANAGNOSTARAS                   UCLA BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
STEPHAN@PSYCH.UCLA.EDU