Iomega Peerless now shipping: Empeg response?

Looks like Iomega is now shipping its "Peerless" storage carts (ruggedized IBM Travelstar drives). Some have commented this is similar (identical?) to Phatbox media. Anyone know much about this?

Seems interesting, esp. since Iomega already markets its own (Clik-- er, PocketZip) MP3 devices. I'd expect SonicBlue might not be interested in licensing this type of cart for its own devices, though it seems a reasonably promising product idea.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0105/01052501iomegapeerless.asp

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Empeg Mk. 2 #626, 18Gb blue | Kenwood KMD-X92. 2000 VW Passat wagon.

The phatbox media are more sensible if you ask me - they're complete IDE drives in the box. The peerless carts are IBM drives minus the driver PCB; this rather ties you into IBM drives, and head technology (etc).

Hugo

A Phatbox cartridge is just a plastic case and a proprietary IDE+power to centronix ruggedized female pcb.
phatbox drives are toshiba 6gb laptop ide drives. 'course thats what i have. Supposedly at the oct. launch they'll have 30gb ones for a "special" price

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xlR

Hi.

The IOmega peerless drive is far to expensive. The cartridges, which are effectively IBM notebook drives without the electronics, are more expensive than the corresponding (fully featured) IBM drives. In the case of the 20GB model, you could acquire a firewire or USB case for 2.5" drives plus the IBM drive for less than the cartridge alone, and you would surely be more independent, because you could use that drive without an iomega docking station/cradle on almost any PC and/or Mac (at least in the USB version).
For mobile data storage, I either use the empeg (using ftp) or a 3.5", 40GB drive in an external firewire/ieee1394 case, which is basically the size of a book (half letter size, about 1.5" thick). smaller amounts of data are transfered either by zip or CD/RW.

cu,
sven
proud MkII owner (12GB blue now green, #080000113)