But It Can't Read

Cartridge interchangeabil-ity is an issue with most, if not all, optical drives. Cartridges themselves may be interchangeable, but different formatting techniques may make one vendor's cartridge unreadable by another vendor's drive. While we did not have the opportunity to do cross-compatibility testing for this review, the Plasmon drive uses phase-change media that would not be compatible with drives using magnetic/optical media, such as the Sony or Ricoh devices. Be aware, too, that d ifferent OSes (e.g., Windows 95 and Windows NT) may format media using different sector sizes or drive formats.--Andrew Froning, Managing Editor, NSTL, Publications