Iomega Corp is leaving the higher end niche market of Travan and Qic tape back-up and going all out for the ever-more-for-ever-less commodity consumer market with the launch of Ditto 2000. The company has launched a low cost, 2Gb version of its Ditto tape drive, currently available in 800Mb or 3.2Gb formats (CI No 2,764), which it is aiming at the small business and home user market, as an insurance system for data. Insurance and computer storage may be topics that make us yawn, but anyone who has suffered a hard disk crash will appreciate Iomega’s ‘insurance for your personal computer’ offering. Iomega says the average personal computer is currently shipping with a 1.2Gb hard disk, and by next year, 2Gb will be the standard. The Ditto 2 Gb will therefore enable simple full disk back-up (CI No 2,992). The company says most small business and home users are put off back-up because of the price of the media itself. Where the drives have been getting cheaper, the cartridges were still relatively expensive. In partnership with Sony Electronics Corp, the company has introduced a 0.3 tape cartridge with high recording density (CI No 2,989). The Ditto drive comes as an internal or external option. The internal fits in any 5.25 flop py drive bay, and the external plugs into the parallel printer port, with pass-through capability for the printer. It will write only to Ditto 2Gb cartridges but will read other tape formats created on Iomega drives including Qic and Travan. The Ditto also comes with Chilli Pepper Software Inc’s 1-step software, on CD-ROM or floppy disk. 1-step enables the user to set continuous back-up running in the background, without disturbing the workload. It also prompts users to run a full back-up at given intervals. It will include a Windows NT driver from next month, and a feature to enable direct access to the tape drive. The Ditto 2000 is available now. According to the company, it began shipping to dealers a couple of weeks ago, to prevent a rerun of the supply embarassment it suffered last year with the launch of its Zip drives (CI No 2,682). The company also said several of its OEM customers will probably include Ditto 2Gb as standard, including Gateway 2000 Inc and Packard Bell Electronics Inc.
