As the leading expert on the installation and care of a solder-curse-and-pray iMac floppy drive, it's only natural I evaluate other alternatives. See also the famous 'disaster' story for Barb's version of my Harrowing Hallowe'en Experience. A few weeks ago one of our wonderful customers in Japan (Bruce Ellsworth) emailed me to ask if we would be interested in selling an iMac floppy drive. I was a little hesitant initially as the first experience had almost ended in a divorce. As a result of my first installation I have had both the convenience of a floppy attached to my iMac and the inconvenience of trying to plug the damned thing in. But my first one wasn't blue so I emailed him at once, with Barb hissing 'no' in the background. A week ago my Japanese floppy arrived and I set out to give it a good test. I like the convenience of a floppy drive. I thought I needed one before I had one. After having one I know I need one. We have to do a lot of reviews of the products we sell and nothing is more convenient than an old-fashioned sneaker-net. I learned how not to install one, so I should be qualified to comment on a true plug-and-play option.

The Yano Electric Company, Ltd of Japan have been delivering their delicious Blue Beauty in The Land of the Rising Sun for over a month now. I'm not sure how much you can say about a floppy drive. It's a floppy. Blue in color. Comes with the necessary software on a CD, obviously in Japanese. As with all Japanese products, it's niftily packaged. The quality has to be seen to be believed. This is a handsome product. And it's dead easy. You install the software, plug the floppy cable into the spare USB port and go to work. No messy electric cables to plug in (it takes its power from the USB) and it works. The thing that took the most time was figuring out which of the gobbledygook characters said 'ok' when installing the software.

The one anomaly Mac users should be aware of is the dual Mac/PC feature. We Maccers are used to dragging a floppy to the trash and having the machine automatically spit it out. PCs are so dumb you need to push a button to eject the floppy, ready or not. And to keep costs down, all the manufacturers I am aware of are building USB floppies to be switch hitters, PC or Mac. So I suspect they will all come with a button eject. You still need to drag the floppy to the trash but then you need to manually push the eject button on the drive itself. Yano expects FCC approval of the drive in February. Just as well, since they are selling them in Japan as fast as they can make them. The current cost in Japan is 14,800 Yen, about $120. By February, expect a price in the US market of about $99-$119.

Several companies have expressed an interest in producing iMac floppy drives. The Imation drive is shipping in tiny quantities but I question the true usefulness of a 120Mb floppy drive which doesn't work with anything else you have in the office. True, you get a 1.44Mb floppy drive but you are paying an extra $30 for a feature (120Mb superdisk) which may be more of a liability than a benefit. I suspect customers will be satisfied with a basic 1.44Mb floppy drive which will read and write both Mac and PC disks. We expect to have stock of the Yano drives in February, hopefully with English software. In case we don't, practice your Japanese between now and then. As a matter of interest I have two floppy drives now on my iMac and I can use them both at the same time. Barb asked me to share with you the benefits that can be gained from that two-floppy feature, but I can't for the life of me think of any. But it's 'different.' If you think you might like to possess one of these Japanese gems, do email Barb, put floppy in the subject line, and she will drop you a note with an order form link when we have them on the shelf. If we get gazillions of emails it'll probably be a quick SPAM-type note. Bob Moriarty MacCPU December 11th 1998

March 1999. No USB Floppy from Yano We have a lawyer who happens to speak Japanese, and after this article was written in December we had him try to set up something with the manufacturer. But to no avail. We got nowhere in 3 months. I believe these floppies are still selling like hotcakes in Japan, and maybe while demand exceeds supply Yano won't be wanting to make committments to USA. And we apologise for making you wait, for what has turned out to be nothing. There were many USA floppy drives planned for Jan/Feb - none of them seem to have turned into reality yet. And we wonder if maybe there are problems? If anyone has a floppy drive other than the Imation, do please let me know - tell me where you bought it and I will point interested customers in the right direction.