SparQ is a hit or miss deal
Written: Apr 18 '00 (Updated May 29 '00)
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Pros: Really cheap drive these days, really low cost media, fast hard drive like speed, easy set up especially for win9X systems, catridges are still being made by Iomega
Cons: high drive failure rate, fairly high chance of getting a failing drive out of the box, company is in Chapter 11
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| yusakugo's Full Review: SYQT SyQuest SparQ (SPARQ1AI-01) Drive |
SparQ drives were once sold by the now bankrupt SyQuest. SyQuest has reestablished their web site and sell what little stock it has left... now you ask why do you need any more reviews on a defunct product.
Simply because the majority of the stockpile of SyQuest drives was sold to Iomega with the intellectual property rights for all SyQuest drives (this occurs end of 1998 I believe). The drives were sold to Iomega at ridiculously low prices and then sold off to various places like www.onsale.com and many, many auction houses. Although the drives themselves are no longer produced. Iomega is supposedly still making the cartridges for the higher end SyQuest drives. So this is somewhat good news to SyQuest faithful like myself. Stockpiles of SyQuest drives are running low so as a result the prices are starting to rise... they are double the prices I found in late 1999.
The bad news is that there really is no support for the drive otherwise and repairs for damaged/broken SyQuest drives are expensive to be done by the remains of SyQuest who did change their name (but are still at www.syquest.com).
Now, what about the SparQ?
A 1.0 Gig drive that originally retailed at $199 but can be found in prices much lower than $100 for the drive and up to 4 cartridges (average price $50-70 range for drive and 1 cartridge.) The drives comes in a variety of flavors like EIDE and External Parallel port. The EIDE version is a speedy little thing. Easily boasting hard drive like speeds and excellent transfer rates. There is a power on switch on the Parallel port drive and a both versions have a large eject button on the front. There is a manual eject as well using a paper clip for eject problems. Roughly the same size as Zip and Jaz units although the portable power pack for the parallel port version is very bulky. Cartridges slide out quick and easy thought a swing down front door that springs back closed. I was running games of the SparQ drive such as Fallout, Fallout 2, Wing Commander Prophecy, Wing Commander Prophecy Special Ops., as well as music files, image files, and quicktime videos. No significant hang time was noted or dropped data. My first impressions were that I was very impressed with the drive.
However, first impressions are not the only the best impressions. My first SparQ drive was an EIDE version and failed within 3 month of purchase. My next 4 SparQ replacements failed within 1 day so I had gone to CompUSA 4 times in one week to exchange the drive. On top of this I had the cartridges fail on me as well because the drives had damaged them beyond the point that data could be read off them. All in all the drive was replaced a total of 9 times and I still wound up with one that broke within 6 months. The cartridges were replaced 6 times (I bought an additional three pack which I got free after rebates at the time). This drive was one of the major reasons why SyQuest went bankrupt. At the current prices and those who like to try their luck, the drive may be worth buying but hoping that you do get a working drive. As in my ORB review, these types of drives in general have a fairly high failure rate. The SyQuest SyJet I would recommend since I have bought my fourth and all four are still in perfect working condition (The oldest drive is 5 years old). I could not in good conscience recommend the SparQ with all the hardware failure problems it has and the fact that the company is in Chapter 11. You can get cartridges but what happens if the drive goes. On top of this, much less people have this drive as compared to the Zip or CD-ROM so I don't feel it is viable as a sharable storage medium.
The short of the story is that if you have one of these drives and it is working... more power to you... you will find it is a wonderful drive and very capable. However, to many others, you will be rather unhappy when you find the drive quickly failing on you after coming out of the package. The price is low enough for some to take a risk in purchasing the drive (although shipping and handling costs are rather high at those places selling the drive). I think it is too hit or miss for most people and the device really has a small select audience that needs this kind of device. It's easier and in most cases cheaper to buy the CD-RW or new hard drive. CDs are easier to distribute and hard drive prices are so cheap these days (and getting cheaper... 20 Gigs for $99 bucks and better prices on the web or CompUSA 2 day special deals).
Recommended:
No
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yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
Location: Somewhere in the NorthEast
Reviews written: 399
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Losing Sleep and Lacking Time... sigh...
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