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Has the new Sony 650 MB data drive and discs been released? Do you know their
prices?
The reason the the original Sony data drive didn't make it was:
a) the price of the drive was much too high
b) the price of the discs were too high
c) it was slow as shit!
LAS
> Hi everyone!
>
> When I first heard about the MD Data format being released by Sony, I
> thought that it would be a successful "B Drive". But Iomega went in around
> the time that Sony released MD Data and aggressively pushed their "Zip" disk
> on everyone.
>
> The factors that brought Zip as the primary "B drive" was the snappy name,
> the sexy blue case that the external drive came in and the way the earlier
> versions were able to connect via the parallel port on the average PC. This
> was exaggerated by the big-budget ad campaigns that they took out, with the
> goal of running it as a "loss-leader".
>
> What Sony needs to do is promote the new MD-Data2 650Mb disc as a "B drive"
> is to market it as a "Zip killer". This would mean designing USB or SCSI
> external drives that work with current-generation PCs and Macs and are
> presented in sexy boxes; encouraging the Linux community to write Linux
> drivers for the MD-Data2 drives, providing software for playing (and perhaps
> editing or recording) regular audio MiniDiscs; and market it in a
> loss-leading way.
>
> The MD-Data2 discs could hold heaps of high-resolution digital images
> (especially in bitmap form), many projects worth of Word documents, one or
> two desktop publishing projects with all of the images for that project.
>
> An interesting appliance concept for this medium would be a digital image
> view-download unit for use in the field. These devices, in a similar vein to
> Iomega's Clik digital-image-download device which fills 40Mb disks, would
> transfer images from a CompactFlash card or a SimartMedia card to an
> MD-Data2 disc (which holds 10 times the amount of the biggest CF card). This
> would allow a photographer to work at the highest resolution on one of the
> new 2.3 or above megapixel digital cameras for a long time without worrying
> about memory-card space. This comes in handy during weddings, holidays and
> other occasions where a lot of pictures are being taken and there is no
> chance of being able to download the images during the trip.
>
> By providing a built-in LCD screen in the device (which the Iomega Clik
> device doesn't have), it makes it possible to preview images taken during
> the past shoot, thus conserving the camera' batteries for taking pictures.
> The unit can support external video outputs so images can be viewed on a
> video monitor by a group or projected using a video projector. USB ports
> would be provided so the unit can be connected to a computer for image
> manipulation or to a printer, card drive (for other solid-state media) or
> scanner. As well, regular audio MiniDiscs can be played in the unit, with
> such facilities as an "at-a-glance" track index.
>
> With regards,
>
> Simon Mackay
>
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