SyQuest Announces World's First 100MB Rugged, Fast Removable PC Card Hard Cartridge Drive with Matchbook-Size Storage Cartridges; SyQuest Sets New Standard for Mobile Computing and Digital Photo Storage with Innovative High Performance SQ1100

Business Wire, Oct 25, 1995

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 25, 1995--SyQuest Technology, (SYQT-NASDAQ), today at COMDEX Asia, announced an innovative breakthrough in disk drive technology, the first 100 MB PC Card (PCMCIA) Type III removable hard cartridge drive, with matchbook size cartridges, for notebook and laptop computers. The cost for a single evaluation unit is $299 for a drive and one cartridge and $49 for each additional cartridge, making it less than 50 cents per megabyte for incremental PC Card storage.

"One of the key benefits of this tiny removable cartridge drive is significant cost savings -- it has the lowest incremental cost per megabyte of all add-on PC Card portable storage devices," according to Chandran Cheriyan, product manager for the SQ1100, adding that conventional PC Cards offer a cost of approximately $1.50/MB and flash memory can be as high as $40/MB.

"The SQ1100, a rugged and reliable device, is a 25% increase in capacity to our award-winning 80MB PC Card device, the SQ1080. We shipped the SQ1080 to several OEM customers and the feedback that we got was they wanted a higher capacity in a value price range. The SQ1100 is a result of listening to what customers wanted and giving it to them," according to Randy Peterson, vice president of product marketing. "Not only does SyQuest listen to its customers, but we are also the price/performance and innovation leader in the removable cartridge storage industry. As a removable-removable storage solution, our SQ1100 is a one-of-kind device, unique in the world."

Applications for the SQ1100 include: easy notebook and laptop computer back up, navigation and mapping, software and database distribution, and digital photography. "The SQ1100 will become a standard for many digital photographers because of its price, flexibility and ruggedness. The SQ1100 is the perfect solution for storing electronic images on digital card cameras and easily transferring them to a Macintosh or PC workstation," according to Al Conte, product manager at Microtech International, a reseller of SyQuest's SQ1100. "This solution frees the user of being tethered to the computer and allows the use of inexpensive, removable, reusable cartridges for capturing the large number of images on a typical shoot."

The professional PC Card solution for a "digital photographer" will consist of Digital Photo Album from Microtech International, a unique, dual slot, SCSI 2, reader/writer for the Macintosh. Bundled with an SQ1100 and one cartridge for $1,074 complete, the Digital Photo Album provides integration of PC Card technology into the Apple Macintosh line of desktop and PowerBook computers.

Rugged and Reliable

"Another very important benefit is data reliability. If a user drops his or her notebook computer and a conventional PC Card hard drive is damaged, then the data could be lost. However, with an SQ1100 removable system, the user can just pop out the rugged SyQuest cartridge and insert it into another SQ1100 drive on another system. There the data can be easily retrieved," said Cheriyan. -0

                       SQ1100 Specifications