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From: zeke@eta.unix.ETA.COM (Robert K. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Cheap diskettes - a bargain?
Summary: MEI Micro, and other Generic disks
Message-ID: <685@wilbur.unix.ETA.COM>
Date: 17 Nov 88 00:03:40 GMT
References: <32406@bbn.COM>
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: The Final Frontier
Lines: 38

In article <32406@bbn.COM>, levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin) writes:
> I just got a flyer in the mail from MEI/Micro Center of Columbus,
> Ohio.  They are advertising 3.5" diskettes at $.85 each (in lots of
> 25; shipping $.50 and labels at $1.50 for 50 -- this amounts to 50
> disks for $45 complete).  They claim diskettes are certified to meet
> or exceed ANSI standards and have "Lifetime Warranty".  My question:
> anyone heard of these guys or have any experience with them or their
> products?  This price is good till the end of December.
> 

Our Personal Computer user group here at work has bought the MEI Micro
5.25" disks, and has found them quite inexpensive and satisfactory.
However, these were Mess-DOS disks, and there is quite a significant
difference between 360K (really) floppies and the 3.5" 800K floppies.

Our Mac/Amiga/Atari users have pooled together and consistently bought
Sony disks, both the boxed ones and the unlabeled bulk pack ones.  We
have had only 1 failure in perhaps 3000 disks that have been bought, all
for an average price of $1.60 per disk.  The failure, BTW, turned out
to be questionable alignment of some disk heads, not the disk.

Other users at my company have bought other brands of 3.5" disks, and
the results have been significantly less reliable.  We even had some
Kodak disks that got garbaged while write locked.

Summary: Some people will swear by generic or bargain brand diskettes.
However, my experiences indicate that if you value your data, you
may want to consider seriously the tradeoff between inexpensive disks
and the frustration of losing valuable information.  I, and most of my
collegues here, buy Sony disks and trust none other for serious work.

-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% From the Final Frontier %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
These are my opinions, of course.  Why the hell would my company want them?

Robert K. "Zeke" Scott        internet: zeke@sunfun.eta.com
voice: (612) 642-3493         uucp: {amdahl,rutgers}!bungia!eta!sunfun!zeke
snail: ETA Systems, Inc. ETC03J, 1450 Energy Park Drive, St. Paul, MN  55108