While IBM in the US has so far shown little interest in erasable optical disk drives, IBM Japan is ready with one of the first 3.5 magneto-optical drives – Maxtor Corp announced such a drive a couple of years ago. IBM Japan says it will start shipping the drives and disks in March: the platters store 128Mb and cost $75 a time, the drives are about $2,255. No word on access time or performance. IBM’s move is expected to lead to a rush to launch rival 3.5 drives by the likes of Sony Corp and Ricoh Co.
