You'll also find a Guest utility on a floppy disk, which lets you attach your Zip Drive to a different PC via the parallel port without permanently installing it. Iomega asserts that the ZipPlus is faster than the standard Zip Drive, though it's still not fast compared with newer entries from Iomega and SyQuest. If it's just for personal use, however, you can get better speed and more capacity from the Avatar Shark 250 or the SyQuest SparQ at a similar price. The Jaz is SCSI-only, but you can get an optional converter for hooking it up to a parallel port. Unlike the ZipPlus, it uses an ultra SCSI connector.
Minimal installation consists of plugging in the cable and power cord and booting up.
In our Labs, the Jaz essentially tied with the Summatec MobileDrive on read tests, and it did well when we tried writing large files to the drive. Installation of the DittoMax is standard for an internal drive. Mount it in a bay and connect the power and data cable, either to a floppy disk controller or to the 4-Mbps accelerator card offered. As with other tape drives, performance is less than stellar but better than you might expect, thanks to the accelerator card. We timed it at 11 minutes 48 seconds for the 80MB backup and 7 minutes 24 seconds for the restore.