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IBM Microdrive

A Microdrive  is a hard disk that goes in the pcmcia slot of laptop computers

The comments below are about the process of buying an IBM Microdrive, not about using it. I have not seen, touched or used an IBM Microdrive, at least, not at the time these gripes were written. 

What Operating System? 

January 12, 2001:   IBM sells microdrives for use in multiple devices. Among the devices are digital cameras and laptop computers. For laptop computers they sell the microdrive and a pcmcia adapter in what they term a "travel kit". The web site where they sell microdrives has a long list of compatible devices. In the laptop computer section, there is a long list of compatible computers. Nowhere however, does it say what Operating Systems are compatible with the microdrives. How can you sell a product for laptop computers and not mention the supported Operating Systems? Talk about being hardware focused.  

I called the IBM disk drive unit on the phone to ask about this. The person I spoke to could not easily look it up but had to put me on hold for a long time. Eventually he said Windows 95 OSR2 and up. Does that include Windows 2000 I asked? He wasn't sure. 

I ordered the microdrive on the phone and asked the salesperson the same question. She too had to look it up in a few different places and had to put me on hold for a long time. Eventually she came back with Windows 95, 98 and NT. What about Windows 2000? She didn't know. I didn't ask about Windows Me.

OS Update May 1, 2001. Iomega re-sells the IBM Microdrive and they claim it works with Windows 2000. However, I emailed IBM to get a hopefully definitive answer. IBM said: 
   Supported Operating Systems for the Microdrive are: Windows CE 2.11 or
   higher, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Mac OS 8 or higher. For USB
   Reader/Writers, the USB support for Windows 95 is not supported. The
   Microdrive may work in Windows NT4 or Windows 2000 systems, but they are
   not considered supported operating systems.
It may work with Windows NT4 or Windows 2000? They don't know? They never tested it? Guess not. 

OS Update May 2, 2001. Microtech is an authorized reseller/distributor of IBM Microdrives. I also emailed them about whether the drives work with Windows NT4 and Windows 2000. They said:
     The Microdrive is compatible with both NT and 2000.
Who to trust? 
Update: The Microtech web site www.microtechint.com no longer works, they may be out of business. November 14, 2003. 

How Much is that disk drive in the window?  

I started at the IBM home page. From there, I clicked on Shop IBM. Then to Storage, then to Hard Disk Drives. The Hard Disk page featured three disks. One of them was a microdrive for $299. The ad for this disk is show here as it appeared on January 12, 2001 and at least for a couple days earlier too.   

When you click on the link, lo and behold the drive now costs $275.  Below is the bottom of the web page for this microdrive showing the product number, description and price number two. 

If this was a mom and pop web site, no big deal. But it is the exact polar opposite. It is IBM. They have bet the company on eBusiness. Yet buying one of their own products at their own web site and they can't even keep track of the price. 

Is that disk drive in the Window?  

January 17, 2001.  I thought the above gripe about the price was a big deal. How naive. When I ordered the microdrive on the phone on January 12, IBM said it would arrive by FedEx yesterday. When it did not, I called IBM at (888) SHOP-IBM only to learn they don't have it.  IBM can't keep track of either the price or the inventory! On the phone today I was told that the drive is not expected to be in stock for about three weeks. I can only think of the commercials IBM runs on TV bragging about how they can help companies tie together all their computer systems. Sure. 

What does the IBM web site have to say today? No surprise here, it still touts the 340 meg microdrive as "now available" (see image above). I started the purchase process and added one to my online shopping cart. What did it say as to availability? Nothing. That section of the shopping cart display is blank. Just for fun I also added a couple other microdrives to my shopping cart. Again, the resultant web page says nothing at all about the availability of the items (see below). 

 The fine print however says: 

Availability statement is based upon a 4-week outlook. "Available" indicates that the product should be available in inventory within 4 weeks.  

If that's what "available" indicates, what does saying nothing indicate?  

Since the 340 meg drive with the pcmcia adapter (travel kit) is not available, I asked on the phone about the 170 meg version also with the pcmcia adapter. It is discontinued. Five days ago it was for sale on the shop.ibm.com web site.  

While on the shop.ibm.com web site, a new browser window opened and asked if I wanted to chat online with a sales rep. I said yes, which resulted in the below Security Warning window shown below.  Not wanting to grant Full Permission without knowing what it means to an organization that can't sign a certificate on a specific date, I said NO. 

Expecting Better Things From Big Blue. March 8, 2001. The New York Times. By Michelle Slatalla. Another unhappy IBM web site customer, this time trying to buy a ThinkPad. Quoting: "The IBM site turned out to be one of the most confusing, least intuitive shopping sites I have ever visited. ...  The site was so hard to navigate that I wondered if I had stumbled upon the explanation for the spectacular crash of the dot-com economy."  

No Improvement With Time 

April 18, 2001. I went to the IBM web site to see if there had been price changes on the Microdrives. 

The URL shop.ibm.com no longer exists. Instead of a nice message explaining why it died and re-directing me to the new URL that took its place, I get an error that the page can not be loaded. This is disgraceful. There is no more link called "shop" at www.ibm.com, instead there is a link called "Ready to buy."  Perhaps the artists involved in designing IBM's web site never heard of the software concept of downward compatibility.

From Ready to Buy, I went to storage overview and then to hard disk drives where they still have the 340 meg Microdrive advertised at $299 which is the wrong price. The screen shot below shows this ad and was taken today. The correct price is still $275, no change from January. Clicking on the ad brings up a web page with the right price. After three months, IBM still can not advertise the correct price for this product. A brutal disgrace. 

The hard disk page has a link to a Microdrives page. The product I was researching, the 340 meg Microdrive with a travel kit (so it can fit into a laptop computer) is sometimes described as product 31L9337 and sometimes described as part number 00N8073. What's the difference? Beats me. 

On the hard disk page, I tried entering the part number for one of the Microdrives. A screen shot of the resulting error is below. 

As a final insult, IBM spammed me. Out of the blue, a new web browser window opened with an offer of a free camera if I bought a computer. 

The one gigabyte Microdrive (product 07N5593)used to be $400, now its $480. No gripe, just an FYI.