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From: arxt@sphinx.uchicago.edu (patrick  palmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Cheap diskettes - a bargain?
Summary: Probably not
Message-ID: <818@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 88 04:33:00 GMT
References: <32406@bbn.COM>
Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu
Reply-To: arxt@sphinx.uchicago.edu.UUCP (patrick  palmer)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
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>I just got a flyer in the mail from MEI/Micro Center of Columbus,
>Ohio.... 
>....  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.
 
MY experience with the MEI disks is that they are unreliable, at least over
the long (maybe not all that long) haul.  I bought 50 from them last summer.
Seven would not format, so I returned them and they promptly replaced them.
By now 12 more have failed - including 2 of the replacements.  (I exercised
them on two Amigas and on an Amiga belonging to a friend - there is no pattern
indicating drive problems.  Most decisively, none of the 40 or so Sony DSDD 
disks that I have have ever failed.)  I now wish I had paid twice as much and 
got disks that I could trust.  When you have to think about making 2 backup 
copies instead of one, the cost difference disappears.  Needless to say, the
aggravation factor from read-write errors during long downloads or backups is
not negligible either.

I should emphasize that the company did do what they said they would, and 
maybe I was just unlucky in the 2 batches of disks that I got samples from.
I will be interested to hear what others experience is.