QPS External LS240MB USB Superdisk Drive

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Summary: THE LS240 SOLUTION!
Review: A USB powered unit the QPS LS240 is apparently built by Panasonic and "badged" for QPS--Addonics sells the same unit under their name. In the box you will find (in addition to the drive) a CD-ROM, a 240MB disk, booklet,and a USB extension cable. I use the drive to archive and transfer files between a Mac and a PC. The Mac (OS 9.04) recognized the drive and didn't require driver installation. However the PC (Windows 98) needed the drivers. Installed with the driver is a program called SuperWriter 32 that allows you to put 32MB on a standard floppy. I've dropped 32 megs of MP3s on floppy and it works well. But SuperWriter claims to only work with the LS240 drive, and so far I have been unable to make it work with the PC's internal floppy--which would be quite handy. As for documentation a small "owner's manual' type booklet is included and is easy to understand. The manual on the CD for SuperWriter 32 is another matter. It seems to have been poorly translated into English and is hard to follow. Overall if you need external sorage with drag and drop simplicity that will allow the use of floppies (along with the bonus of the 32Mb option) and Superdisks (120MB, and 240MB). You may do well with this drive.

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Summary: My only travel drive...
Review: I use an IBM TransNote notebook computer for travel, which has many advantages, but lacks internal floppy and CD drives. I use my LS240 drive on the road, bringing just a few floppies and a few SuperDisks with me for all my removable storage. The TransNote recognizes it as a bootable drive for floppies, so it is my recovery drive as well. I also use it at home in conjunction with or in place of my Zip drives. It always works right for me. The only drawback is that while compatible LS120 disks are easy enough to come by, it is nearly impossible to find LS240's.

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Summary: A decent piece of hardware, but there are some problems....
Review: I'd just like to say that if you plan on using superdisks, this is the way to go, because just about every drive out there is pretty terrible, but this is the least terrible of them all. That being said, this drive worked, and the software was pretty useful (and kudos on the compression scheme that was developed, which allowed normal floppies to be compressed to 31.9 mb format while in this drive). One of the gripes is the simply idiotic shortness of the USB cable, so short that a extension cable was necessary (which we all know slows down the travel of data by several hundred miliseconds, that sounds like nothing, but when you're writing large portions of data, it makes a difference). This drive is removable and you can switch it between several computers whenever you like. Also, it requires no extra source of power, another pro to using it. Now on with the cons... The writer software is moronic to a startling degree. Programs need to be added to "the well" (just a list of programs) to be written, why you couldn't just select them in the normal file tree was beyond me... For users with anything but Mac or Windows (this is a very small minority) like myself, porting of the program was necessary (an extremely boring and fairly difficult procedure). The thing is *loud*, it makes a great deal of buzzing noises, and I found myself wanting to leave the room because of it. And writing is so very slow. I got this mostly to switch data between my desktop(s) and an older laptop (which for some reason wouldn't read burned CDs) so it gets the job done for the most part, but if you can just manage to get a decent CD burner (like any plextor) then I would stay away from this.

Rating:
Summary: THE LS240 SOLUTION!
Review: This is a very good product because you can recycle your floppies and convert them to 32MB. I dont know about you but I have at least 75 at home. In this way I could use only a few and use the rest to store music and games. Best yet, you can use the 120mb or 240mb disks if you need more room.