Get mobile with a lighter and speedier solution to transferring files

Picture this scenario: Your boss wants a big project you are working on to be ready first thing tomorrow morning. Your wife wants you back early tonight or you are dead meat. What can you do? Your only choice is to pull an all-nighter and take the project home.

You save the 100 megabyte file to floppy disks - 70 to be exact. You get home only to find some of the disks are corrupted.

An alternative to jumping out of the window would be to invest in an Iomega Zip 250 USB drive. It is the latest addition to the company's Zip product line, and works on both PCs and Macs.

Why consider the Zip 250? It equals the capacity of 170 floppy drives. You can transfer up to 250MB of data on to one Zip disk (or 100MB since it is backward compatible with older Zip drives) at a 900KB/sec data transfer rate. Moreover, Zip 100MB disks are not that expensive and typically go for about HK$60; expect 250MB disks to drop in price as well.

The old external parallel Zip 100MB drive was a cumbersome beast to lug around, especially when you add the cable and big power supply to your travels. The newly designed, super-thin Zip 250 drive is less than an inch thick and weighs an easily portable 258g, in a snazzy blue chassis. When your desk is pressed for space, you can use the included stand and position the drive on its side.

Most notebooks and desktops nowadays have at least one USB port, so you can take advantage of the Zip 250's USB plug-and-play connectivity. For mobile users whose laptops do not have a USB port, the drive provides a host-powered PC card interface, which means you do not need to carry an external power supply around.

With the USB port, the Zip 250 not only works with Windows 95/98 and NT 4.0 PCs, but also on Macintosh systems.