Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co is pushing phase-change as the next and best rewritable storage technology around. In the UK, its subsidiary Panasonic Personal Computer Co and Royston, Hertfordshire-based Plasmon Data Ltd are already marketing its quad speed CD-ROM drives that use phase-change as the optical mechanism. Now the guts of these combi-drives is being taken by Stonehouse, Gloucestershire-based Cristie Electronics Ltd and packaged as an external unit, which the company will market as a software installation tool. Photon, as it is called, comes with both a parallel port and Small Computer Systems Interface, back-up software for MS-DOS and Windows and cabling. However, at ú1,000 it is considerably more expensive than either Plasmon’s or Panasonic’s systems that come in around ú700. Not a problem, said Cristie. The price gives resellers a realistic margin with which to work, which the other two do not, and it’s an external drive, aimed at quite a different market, said the company. Panasonic and Plasmon are looking more to consumers or organisations that have computer users hot desking, but Cristie is targetting people using Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s Unix. Open Server 5.0, which Santa Cruz Operation has just released, comes on 65 floppy disks or an optical disk, but most Unix users have little reason for a CD other than for loading software. So the Photon comes with installed boot-time loadable drivers for this Unix and the company will be targetting firms upgrading to this version 5.0 with the drive. Cristie has already sold a couple of Photons to Santa Cruz’s offices in Italy and is talking to the company in Germany. Drivers are being developed for OS/2 and Windows95, again for software distribution. Down the line, there will be software for them that supports OS/2 and NetWare.
