> Forgive me for asking, but if you have a CD-RW drive, do you *need* a ZIP drive?

The Zip drive is taking over the 3.5" disk drive's position as a medium to transfer small amounts of data between computers. With today's file sizes, a 3.5" disk is very quickly filled to the brim, and many files you typically would want to take with you (pictures or mp3 files or whatever) won't even fit on one. Also, files that small are nowadays more easily transferred via e-mail.

However, as the 3.5" disks, the Zip disks are a bit slow and unreliable. You should, in my opinion, NEVER trust Zip disks with backup data. I've had a couple of disks screw themselves up completely out of the blue.

If you get a fast CD-R writer and a Zip disk, you'll be better off, in my opinion, than with a CD-RW drive. CD-R disks are very cheap, and everyone can read them. More and more people have Zip drives, too, so if you're going anywhere and want to take files with you, Zip drives are excellent. If you're sending files somewhere, though, CD-Rs are probably better, because they're so cheap that you don't need to have them back. Sending out Zip drives and not having them returned would soon become expensive.

Travholt.