Magazine publisher afloat with Iomega drives
In an environment where there is no room for error, and very little for wasted time, Peter Webb, a graphic designer and producer of Sydney Afloat, a monthly boating magazine, is constantly looking to improve the efficiency of his design processes.
With a circulation of over 17,000, Sydney Afloat is one of the widest read boating magazines in Australia. The magazine covers issues and news from Sydney's waterways and features contributions from both the Navy and the NSW Waterways Authority.
Apart from putting the magazine together each month, Peter also designs for one of Australia's leading financial institutions and services a number of other, smaller clients. This means he is constantly under pressure to meet printing deadlines and has little time for inefficient production tools.
In addition, the last few years have seen considerable change in the demands designers and publishers such as Peter have placed on removable storage devices. Many of these designers, including Peter, have turned to solutions such as the Iomega® Zip® and Jaz® drives to meet their evolving needs.
"When we started sending the magazine to the printer in electronic format, instead of bromides, the biggest problem we faced was time," said Peter. "It took a long time to break everything up into files that would fit on a floppy and then copy them on to disks one by one. With each edition of the magazine running at around 56 pages, it would generally take me around two hours to copy the magazine."
After trying several storage methods and finding them too unreliable, Peter began using Iomega Zip drives and disks and was immediately impressed with the reliability and convenience the drives offered. Also, with an installed base of over 14 million drives worldwide, Iomega's Zip disks are becoming the standard in the high capacity personal storage market segment, and are unlikely to cause Peter any compatibility problems when transferring information.
"Using Zip drives has streamlined a number of my design processes. Primarily, because it is so much quicker and easier for us to save information using a Zip drive, I have been much more diligent about backing up, and so have saved myself many hours of recovering or redoing lost work. Secondly, because each Zip disk offers the capacity of 70 floppies, it is an extremely fast, convenient and cost-effective storage method."
The extended capacity of the Zip disks also enables Peter to do his own high resolution scans, when previously he had to outsource this activity. This saves Peter up to $200 per month as he is able to produce the entire magazine using his own equipment and his printer simply has to run out the film for the production of the magazine.
Peter continues to use several Zip drives and a Jaz drive, all of which have become extremely valuable tools, especially in facilitating the transfer of information to his printer in Canberra, and in simplifying the process of backing up important documents. He cites the three main benefits of Zip drives as being reliability, compatibility and affordability.
"I have never had any problem with either the Zip or Jaz drives, I would say their number one benefit is reliability - when it comes to deadline day you know your files are safe and the printer, or whoever else you need to send them to, will have no problem opening them. Most people I know have Zip drives and it's a breeze for me to transfer information to the people I deal with via Zip disks.
"When the end of our production cycle comes around, and all that is left is to copy the magazine and send it to the printer, I really start to appreciate my Zip drive. Occasionally I work quite late to meet deadlines, and, at ten o'clock at night when I am finally happy with the magazine, it's reassuring to know that I don't have to spend another two hours saving it to 10 or 15 floppy disks. In two minutes I can save the entire magazine on a Zip disk."
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