Review of USB Zip 100
by David Yee and Mario Espaņa
First Impressions
At a glance, the Iomega USB Zip drive looks quite different than the other external Zip drives. Although the basic shape is the same, the casing of the usbzip.gif (6941 bytes)USB Zip drive is a stylish translucent-blue, designed to emulate the appearance of the Apple iMac. The USB connection located at the back of the drive is tiny, and the supplied silver-ish USB cable is refreshingly thin compared to those clunky parallel and SCSI cables used by other external Zip drives. In addition, the DC power supply block measures just 2" x 1.75" x 1". Its small size means that it can comfortably coexist with other power plugs on conventional power strips. The external Zip drives many of you may have purchased a year or two ago have a much larger power supply block that was merciless in cannibalizing real estate on the surge protector. Note that, however, although the USB specification allows power be delivered from the computer to the USB device, the USB Zip 100 requires too much power and thus the power supply block is still necessary.
usb1.jpg (5488 bytes) usb2.jpg (4318 bytes)
This end goes to the computer. This end goes to the USB Zip drive.
 
Installation
It can't get any easier.
  1. Plug the power supply block of the USB Zip drive to a free electrical outlet.
  2. Connect the correct end of the USB cable to the drive and the other end to the one of the USB ports on the PC.
  3. Almost immediately, a dialog box with the message "New Hardware Found - USB Zip 100" appears.
  4. Insert the installation CD in the CD-ROM drive, keep clicking the Next button, and voila!, you're done.

Note that you must be running a version of Windows (preferably Windows 98, although Windows OSR 2.1 also works) that supports USB, and of course, your computer must have USB ports and a USB-aware BIOS. Most computers that shipped since mid-1997 should have hardware USB support.

A phenomenon we observed was that when you unplug the USB connection, the Zip drive icon promptly disappears from the My Computer window. Restore the connection, and boom, the icon comes back. Cool.
 

Next (Benchmarks, Conclusion)