[reginald78]

I think this is probably right. Zip never quite got the penetration needed to take up the mantle of the floppy as far as I remember. And by the time it gained traction the CD burner was coming onto the scene in a big way. The market badly needed a higher capacity floppy like media, 1.44MB was a complete joke by the time floppy drives were killed. But if you had to choose between buying a zip drive or a CD burner the burner was the way to go. A burner was terrible for shuffling a few files around and early burning with janky disks and slow processors was a gamble, but copying games and albums or making mix CDs as well as the superior capacity just left it with broader utility than a zip drive with expensive disks had.