Hoping to grab its share of buyers shopping for an affordable removable-cartridge drive, SyQuest has introduced the $239.95 EZ135 Drive, which follows closely on the heels of Iomega's highly acclaimed $199 Zip drive (see review, July '95, page 40). What made the Zip such a hit was not only its low cost and sleek design but also its ease of use and rugged media. The EZ135 Drive is a bit more complicated to use than the Zip, though, and its media aren't as damage-proof. That makes it a less attractive, although still viable, choice for consumers looking for an inexpensive backup, data-exchange, and secondary-storage device.
EZ Price
If you've priced other removable-cartridge systems, you can appreciate just how affordable both the EZ135 Drive and the Zip are. Magneto-optical drives and standard SyQuest drives, for example, can cost $350 to $900 apiece, and their cartridges are $35 to $50 each. The cartridges for the EZ135 Drive and the Zip, by contrast, are as attractively priced as the drives themselves: A 135-MB cartridge for the EZ135 Drive costs about $20; the same amount of money will buy the 100-MB cartridge the Zip uses.
However, the cartridges for the EZ135 Drive use different media from those for the Zip. Inside the EZ135 Drive cartridges are rigid Winchester-disk-style platters. In our tests, the cartridges held up well to environmental extremes of heat, dampness, and cold, but they didn't fare as well in our drop tests as the Zip cartridges, which use more-flexible media. We managed to damage an EZ135 Drive cartridge by dropping it several times on the floor.
To be fair, the EZ135 Drive cartridges do come with cushioned envelopes that make it nearly impossible to damage them. But when you slip a cartridge into the envelope, you can't fit the package into your shirt pocket, which means it's more than likely that a good number of cartridges will be traveling around without their envelopes. By contrast, we made unprotected Zip cartridges ricochet off the walls and floor and every one came through with flying colors.
The EZ135 Drive also falls short of the Zip for usability. To dismount a Zip cartridge, you simply drag its icon to the Trash and the cartridge pops out of the drive. With the EZ135 Drive, you drag the icon to the Trash, push the release button on the front of the drive, wait for the lock lever to disengage, and then push the lever to force the cartridge out of the drive. The EZ135 Drive is also a bit blocky compared to the slim, trim, one-pound Zip, and it weighs twice as much.
EZ Speed
One advantage the EZ135 Drive does have over the Zip, however, is speed. In our MacBench 2.0 Disk Mix test, the EZ135 Drive was more than twice as fast as the Zip. But for everyday common tasks, you're not likely to experience such a big speed difference -- for example, an 18-MB file took about 21 seconds to copy to the EZ135 Drive and about 31 seconds to copy to the Zip.
SyQuest's new drive gets along well with existing hardware. The EZ135 Drive cartridge mounted without a hitch as soon as we connected the drive and turned on our test machines. We tested the drive with both a Quadra 950 and a Power Mac 9500. Cartridges written to by one EZ135 Drive were readable by another. And we had no problems connecting the drive to complex SCSI chains. Surprisingly, however, the EZ135 Drive cartridges aren't compatible with SyQuest 270-MB drives, even though the cartridges are exactly the same size as those used by SyQuest's heftier models.
To sweeten the deal for potential buyers, SyQuest offers an impressive collection of free software on the EZ135 Drive cartridge included in the package. La Cie's Silverlining Lite manages Mac hard disks by mounting, unmounting, formatting, and erasing volumes. Dantz's DiskFit Direct backs up your hard drive to your EZ135 Drive, and Leading Technology's PowerMerge Limited Edition synchronizes backed up files. Two Xaos Photoshop plug-ins are also included -- four Terrazzo textures as well as a complete version of Paint Alchemy 1.0.2. Last, buyers get a four-level, two-player version of the game Marathon.
The Bottom Line
Introducing the second product into a brand-new category has an advantage: There's time to learn from your predecessor's mistakes. However, although the SyQuest EZ135 Drive is, as promised, faster than the Zip, speed isn't everything, particularly in the world of consumer-oriented storage products. The new class of inexpensive removable-cartridge drives must, above all, be rugged, portable, and completely intuitive to use. On these counts, we give the Zip the nod, but the EZ135 Drive finishes a strong second.
The latest entry into the inexpensive-removable-cartridge-drive arena, the SyQuest EZ135 Drive is speedy but not as easy to use nor as rugged as the competition.
SyQuest EZ135 Drive
Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
Price: $239.95; 135-MB cartridge, $19.95 (list)
Pros: Inexpensive. Versatile. Good performance.
Cons: Cartridges somewhat fragile. Drive twice as heavy and not as intuitive to use as the Zip.
Company: SyQuest Technology, Fremont, CA; 800-245-2278 or 510-226-4000.
