A Sept. 10 press release from the Iomega Corp. states that the new 750MB FireWire® Zip® drive will be available to the public by Sept. 30. The new drive is currently at the Apple Expo in Paris and is compatible with both Mac and Windows platforms.

Werner Heid, president and CEO of Iomega Corp., showed his commitment to Macintosh users when he said, "The Zip 750MB FireWire drive offers Apple users more capacity and more speed while delivering the seamless and dependable functionality that Mac users appreciate".

The new 750MB Zip FireWire drive is the third generation of removable storage developed and created by Iomega Corp. Since the conception of the original Zip drive in March 1995, the Zip platform has become one of the most accepted computer peripherals ever released with more than 48 million drives and 300 million disks distributed to the public.

One notable feature of the 750MB Zip drive is a 7.5MB/second transfer rate (max), which is equivalent to 50x50x50x CD-RW drive. The advantage of the new Zip drive over a CD-RW drive is its uniform performance regardless of whether it is reading, writing, or rewriting to a disk, while a CD-RW drive inevitably has discrepancies in read, write, and rewrite speeds.

Iomega states that the new products will hit store shelves at the suggested retail price of $199.95 for a 750MB FireWire Zip drive and $12.49 per disk when purchased in an eight-pack.

After reviewing all the specifications of the products, it looks as if the new Zip drive may give CD-RW drive manufacturers some competition. Now that a user can save up to 750MB of data on a Zip disk, the only thing that CD-RW drives will be useful for is recording music.