The first rounds of testing with the Flip Disk were very disappointing. The literature Amacom supplies with its products describes access and performance standards on par with internal drives. We found this not to be so. While transferring files via the PCMCIA port was slightly slow it worked quite well for the most part. Large file transfers from the main hard drive to the Flip Disk were not as fast as an internal hard drive but still useful in times when there are just no other options. Transferring files between the two partitions of the Flip Disk was not at all acceptable. Transfer times were exceptionally long - beyond what could be tolerated by anyone in an office or even home environment, not to mention someone on the go.  Transferring files via the parallel cable were along the same lines, and the benchmarks demonstrate that. It took almost an hour just to do the benchmark the data rate was so slow.

nuances

While we are unable to visualize the inside of the FlipDisk, it would appear that the drives are mounted by some means of vibration dampening, as the the drive operates quite quietly during use.

The blue plastic has a nifty rubberized coating that make griping it easy, and hopefully would prevent it from ever being dropped. Insertion into the laptops PCMCIA drives is easy, and the dual hinge makes it possible to have more then just this drive hooked up the the computer. For example if the computer is hooked up to an Ethernet, the NIC card and its adapter cable could still be used with the Flip Disk's PCMCIA adapter in the bay. By placing the NIC card below the Flip Disk's or above with the computer on a slight angle both are easy possibilities.

Conclusions:

Using the drive via the PCMCIA is not going to deliver near internal drive performance, but it is going to deliver acceptable data transfer rates through a PCMCIA port for those instances where the information being backed up is more important then the time it will take to back up. Using the drive via parallel is just not worth while what so ever... With the advent of USB and Firewire, the bar has been raised up, way up, and devices relying on older means of connection will be left in the dust quickly if they do not adapt to the faster connections now available.