Seiko Epson Co is ready with an ultra-thin 3.5 floppy disk drive family, the SMD 1000 series, to be available in October in 2Mb and 1Mb models at a sample price of about $140 released for sale from October: in this context, thin means four fifths of an inch or less, and to fine the thing down that far, the motor has to be separated from the spindle, which has to be belt-driven and the Seiko model uses a direct drive mode to achieve 0.7 thickness; with the release in June of Toshiba Corp’s Dynabook, claimed at the time to be the smallest lap-top in the world, the demand for thin floppy drives is expanding, and Seiko’s target customers will include makers of lap-tops and Japanese language word processors makers such as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, which has a lap-top word processor with liquid crystal display, which became available this week.
