A '650MB floppy' in 2 years

The soon-to-be-released rewritable version of the CD-ROM "will be like a 650MB floppy", said Susan Reynolds, marketing development manager for Hewlett-Packard Colorado Memory Systems in Asia Pacific.

It's expected that a CD-RW or CD-E (for erasable) will be a standard feature on new PCs by 1999 and cost only $US300.

Ms Reynolds is one of the many HP executives who met in Thailand in December to discuss their strategies for 'extended storage' solutions, such as the optical disk and magnetic tape products.

Image & Data Manager was also there. See page 26 for a full report on the conference.