Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware, where we're taking a look at hardware
and software that is odd, forgotten, and obsolete! And today's is certainly a
mixture of the three as usual: this is the Iomega "Clik!" drive, also known as the
PocketZip, released in 1999 as an alternative to other portable storage
media. However this one is a tiny little disk, it's pretty friggin neat I think.
So let's take a look at the Clik! All right let's do this... this is the Iomega Clik
drive introduced in early 1999 at a suggested price of 200 US dollars for
the Clik Mobile Drive that interfaces using a PCMCIA card. And $250 for this
external Clik Drive for Digital Cameras bundle that connects via the parallel
port. And there was also a Clik Drive Plus available that bundled both of
these options together into a single package for $300. And then we have the
Clik disks themselves which measure about 2" x 2.2 inches and were sold in
packs of 2, 3, or 10 costing $30, $50, or $100 for each bundle respectively. And I
think the design of these things is just downright pleasant, with their metal
casing and tiny mechanisms, making it delightful to hold and admire. And hidden
away behind this little door you get a magnetic disc which it uses for storage.
Much like you'd find in a floppy disk, but much smaller, thinner, and packed more
densely with data, and of course it's proprietary to this format. And although
they were made by Iomega and were later rebranded as Pocket Zip disks, they're
not exactly the same as the more successful ZIP disk format. Now they do
both use magnetic floppy disk storage but from what I gather the exact
specifics of the way the ZIP and the Clik disks actually store that data
differ in some way, with a bit of separation between the two formats in
terms of average read/write speeds and density and all that kind of stuff.
And considering the two formats were contemporaries of each other,
competing for somewhat similar markets at the same time you might ask: what was the
point of the Clik disk? Well all sorts of things leading up to its launch, but
eventually the idea behind the Clik disk was to provide a stopgap in terms
of economics and physical size between Iomega's own ZIP disks and the
increasingly popular solid state storage options like CompactFlash and SmartMedia
cards, especially in the growing digital photo storage market for digital
cameras. And considering a 32 megabyte CompactFlash card could cost around
$150 in 1999, paying as little as $10 for one 40 megabyte disk was not a bad
value proposition. And considering the increasing storage needs for devices
like digital cameras, notebook computers, and handhelds running Windows CE,
there was a race to capitalise on portable storage media. For example, by
the end of 1999 you had Compact Flash cards, Smart Media cards, MMC cards, Sony
Memory Sticks, Secure Digital cards, IBM MicroDrives, LS-120 SuperDisks, HiFD
disks, Zip disks, and rewritable CDs all on the market simultaneously, each of
them attempting to meet wildly different storage needs at wildly different
capacities and price points. Then came the humble 40 megabyte Iomega Clik
disk and... no one cared. It's not that it wasn't impressive on a technical level
since it really was a marvel of electromechanical miniaturization. All of
its circuitry, read/write heads, doors, latches, eject mechanisms, and everything
else were tightly packed into something so small it could fit into a standard PC
Card, inserting with its eponymous click sound.
*lovely click sound*
But the Clik was met with an uphill battle from the start.
In addition to the ridiculous amounts of market
competition the big problem was that you needed a dedicated Clik drive that cost
another two to three hundred dollars, while a simple CompactFlash to PCMCIA
adapter was only about 20 dollars. And yeah, the cards themselves were more
expensive at first but the prices on them were beginning to decrease and
their capacities were growing steadily. As PC Magazine put it in December of
1999: the Clik drive was "technically intriguing," but "maybe an answer to a
question not enough people are asking." So that was one reason,
another popular anecdote I've seen for the Clik's failure is its name, and that
invited negative association with the infamous "click of death" class-action
lawsuit over the self-destruction of Zip drives. But while it is an unfortunate
name in retrospect, I'm skeptical about how much the company actually cared
about this potential association, considering the lawsuit was filed in
1998 -- half a year before the Clik drive was ever released. The lawsuit was
settled later on in 2001, but by then Iomega had already rebranded the failed
Clik as the PocketZip in August of 2000. And according to Iomega PR it was
because they wanted to capitalize on the "good name" and "brand recognition" of their
Zip products. A negative connotation with the Zip drive's failings was never the
stated reason for the name change, as far as I can tell, but I'm sure it was
something they were aware of and changing the name was a good idea just
in case. Either way, though no matter what the
name was it didn't help much because people still weren't buying them.
It didn't even help that Clik drives were integrated into a few consumer
electronics like the Rave MP 2300 portable MP3 recorder, the Agfa ePhoto
CL30 digital camera, and Iomega's HipZip MP3 player. *chuckles* There's a classic early 2000s
name for you. Iomega was pretty stubborn about MP3 players being the big break
PocketZip needed in 2001, making the case that the format was a rugged way to
store your music. But well, the Apple iPod thoroughly crushed that idea with
it's beefy hard drive storage and intense marketing, and then flash memory
killed off what little market remained for the PocketZip. By 2003 you could get a
32 megabyte USB key for about $40, and with those getting cheaper and bigger
all the time Iomega pulled the plug on the Clik / Pocket Zip drive,
canceling their plans for a 100 meg version and promptly leaving the format
behind. But while they abandoned the Clik the adventure is just starting for
us! After all my philosophy is that all oddware deserves a second chance on LGR,
so let's try out these two forms of the device beginning with the PC Card drive.
And right off the bat, I'm sure you've noticed it, but this has a nice
iridescent box. I'm very much a sucker for this shiny kind of packaging.
Straight away inside the box you get some legal information,
a bit of troubleshooting, a quickstart guide and the Iomega software CD. And
this version in particular came with Windows 95 and 98 compatible software.
They also released Windows CE and 2000 later on. And you also get a single Clik
disk in this protective little plastic case. And inside of this black box you
get a protective case for your protected disks. It's a nice, lightweight, brushed
aluminum case with a rubber inside. You can fit a couple disks quite snugly
right in there with a spot for the PCMCIA card on the right. And speaking of
the card, here is the card! You got that end right there that plugs into the pins on
your computer or device of choice, and yeah, it's a pretty standard PC Card, no
power or external dongles required. You just take the Clik disk and insert it
into the end of it and there you go! It's ready to put in your computer. We'll use
this in a moment but in the meantime let's take a look at the digital camera
kit, which is quite a bit more involved as you might be able to see here from
the quick start guide. That's not the quickest of quick start guides I've ever
seen. In fact there's a lot of steps on a lot of components and a lot of different
things to worry about. Anyway you once again get a Clik disk
in the package as well as a much beefier manual and some more Clik software.
And yeah this was a used refurbished model so it doesn't have all the original
packaging inside, but it does have all the components. The main one here is the
Iomega Clik drive, the parallel port version.
Opening this latch reveals where you insert the Clik disk, on the back you
can plug in adapters of various types, and along the bottom is where you attach
the battery. Yep this one is battery-powered, it has a 3.6 volt nickel
metal hydride rechargeable battery that just plugs in right there. But we're not
done yet, you also have the flash memory card reader. And that is really the big
appeal of this particular kit because it has slots for Compact Flash and Smart
Media cards, and it attaches to the rear of the portable Clik drive. We'll show
you how that works in just a moment, but you might be wondering "how do you
actually connect this to a computer?" Well that's where the cradle comes into play.
So you actually have to disconnect the flash memory reader and then plug in the
drive to the top of this, or you could actually just plug it in directly to the
parallel port interface, which also doubles as the cables for the cradle
itself. And when you get this plugged in it not only provides the parallel port
connection to the computer and a pass through if you want to connect a
printer, but also this is where the power adapter has to be plugged in. And yes, the
cradle has to be powered and this is the only way that you can charge the battery.
You can't actually plug in the AC adapter to the unit itself so you have
to bring this stuff along if you want to charge it up. At the end you're left with
a less-than-convenient "portable" system I would say. Even though it does infer
"portability" by coming with this handy little leather Clik drive pouch.
But really all this can fit is the bare drive itself. It doesn't hold the flash
reader, doesn't hold a battery -- it holds the drive, one Clik disk, and
that's about it! Yeah the more you unpack this the less appealing the potential
uses for this become. Anyway, assuming you have the three necessary components to
copy over cards you just plug in the Clik disk in the left side of the drive
over here and then a Compact Flash or Smart Media card over here. You just
press the button and it will immediately start the file copying process. Which is
one way: from the flash memory card to the Clik disk. It took a good three and
a half minutes to do a full 40-ish megabyte copy for me, but I will admit
the convenience is there, it's just a one-button thing! And once you're done
there you go, you've got the contents of your memory card copied over to your
Iomega Clik disk, and you're now free of the restraints of a filled memory card
and are ready to go and do other digital camera things I guess. Yay!
However, for our purposes let's go ahead and take a look at the files that have
just copied over, and to do that we'll be using this lovely IBM ThinkPad 380XD.
*Windows 95 startup sound plays*
Mmm, Windows 95. ❤
First order of business is to get the Iomega software installed.
This not only contains the drivers and tools that make the disks fully
accessible and all that stuff, but it provides a couple of extra programs that
are quite handy, and we'll be taking a look at those in just a moment.
Once that's installed and the computer restarts, it's time to insert the PC Card
into the PC Card slot... Which if you've done correctly on a PC setup like this
you'll get these little sound effects.
*PCMCIA beeping and notification sounds*
And now we can plug in the Clik disk itself.
It's not necessary to insert it into the drive second, however it's
actually really easy to eject the disk as you're inserting the card due to how
the mechanism works, so this is what I'm doing. Anyway once you've done that
it shows up as a removable disk drive under My Computer and there we go!
IMG00001 is the folder that it wrote and here are the digital
photos that I had saved on a Compact Flash card. Which were taken on a Sony
Mavica FD5 camera, which uses floppy disks so yeah this is not the most
appropriate thing, but you know it doesn't matter. But yeah with the
software installed you get access to these extra things in the pop-up menus
like the ability to format the disks in either a quick or full surface format
variety, as well as being able to read and write protect the disks. This is not
done with a physical mechanism, you use software to prevent anyone from reading
or writing to the disk that you don't want to without a password. And it'll
just show up as not being there if you don't know the password. You also get
some handy information added to the regular Windows properties windows...
Windows windows? Yeah whatever, these things! All sorts of stats and options
that you can set that you wouldn't be able to without installing the Iomega
software. One of the utilities that you get in the IomegaWare folder is
QuickSync, and this right here is just your standard kind of backup software. You
tell it what drive you want to back up to, what folders you want backed up, and
how often and it'll do that. Which, I don't want to do that. But what I do want
to do is copy the contents of a Compact Flash card in the other PCMCIA slot,
which contains a copy of Duke Nukem 3D, and transfer that directly to the Clik
drive using the Copy Machine software which is the other main utility this
comes with. And this is just a straight-up media copying utility, so you select
the drive you want to copy from and then the drive you want to copy to. Which of
course in this case is the Clik drive, and well...
*Clik drive struggling to read, making grinding noises*
off-screen: "Oh."
That's not good at all.
I'm not entirely sure what happened, everything was reading and writing just
fine until I had that second PC Card slot full.
*more Clik drive death noises, followed by Windows error sounds*
So I took that card out of
there and it still didn't work, apparently this drive was just ready to
die. Which is a real shame, I was enjoying the crap out of it before it did! Maybe I
just had a bad drive, I don't know, this is the only one that I have. So we're
gonna move on to the parallel port drive which seems to be a little bit more
robust. At least isn't cramped into a PCMCIA slot, so here we go.
Let's try the Copy Machine software once again to see if we can get Duke3D copied
from Compact Flash directly to a Clik disk. And yep that works just fine! Ended
up taking about nine minutes to copy around 33 megabytes of data. It copied
over without hassle, no sad noises of the drive dying this time. But being that
this is running over parallel I expected it to be a little bit slower and it
certainly is. This is Duke3D running off of a Clik
disk directly and it's a somewhat similar experience to when I was trying
to run it off of a Zip drive over parallel. Even though that was the Atomic
Edition, this is just the regular one, so this is a little bit quicker maybe
because it's a smaller game, but anyway. Under ECP or EPP mode it stutters and
it's choppy here and there, just depends on what it's loading. For instance it
takes about 17 seconds to load from the main menu to the first level. And then
while that is loaded it still has to access the disk every so often to bring
in new sound files and the music and certain graphics and things like that.
*Duke 3D sounds play out, with choppy effect. Graphics and sound stutter when the Clik disk loads data.*
So you end up with some stuttering and lag every so often. Again, this is just
kind of expected for a game like this loading from a disk over a parallel port.
But it's perfectly playable and you know, it's just something stupid to mess with
because -- I don't know, I like loading Duke 3D off of obsolete media. I don't
really care what the results are, it just amuses me to see it happen. I know that
the PC Card would be faster, it just that sucks that that thing died in the middle
of testing. Ah well, requiescat in pace flimsy PC Card.
Long live the slower but more robust parallel port Clik drive!
*RPG explosion*
Well that's pretty much it for the Pocket Zip slash "Clik!" disk drive. And you know what?
I really like this! Just in the sense of the way it's designed and built. The
form factor, the shape, the mechanism, the fact that there's a floppy diskette
magnetic media in there, it's just neat. And in retrospect it's just a lot of fun,
I like screwing around with this. However, I can also see why it wasn't a success
in any sense of the word. In fact I can't even find any hard sales numbers, like
units sold or how many were left unsold. But it's my guess that there were a lot
of them left unsold because from what I gather a ton of people that ended up
buying these around you know, 2002 or 3 or 4, got them when they were on
clearance and just like, stuck in bargain bins. And I would be curious to hear if
you had any experience with this back in the day when it was still fresh, because
I didn't. I don't even remember seeing this on store shelves. Um, then again I
wasn't paying too much attention. I was pretty much just happy playing Need For
Speed: High Stakes. But anyway if you enjoyed this video then awesome, perhaps
you would like to see some of my other LGR Oddware episodes. For instance I've
covered the Iomega Zip drive in the past and I'm sure I'll cover more Iomega
stuff in the future. They were a fascinating company that did a lot of
fascinating things back in the day, I just think this stuff is neat. And if you
do you're in the right spot! Either way though there are new episodes
coming every Monday and Friday here on LGR.
And as always thank you very much for watching!