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*