Plasmon Data Ltd, Royston, Hertfordshire manufacturer of optical storage drives has released its new Cheetah series of 2.6Gb drives and jukeboxes. Prices start at about $1,900 for a 1,900rpm internal magneto-optic storage drive and $2,000 for the external version, inclusive of software. An extra $675 will get you a stand-alone drive subsystem, named Cheetah Plus. It has the same 2.6Gb capa?city but spins at 3,600 rpm. Both drives support Macintosh, Windows and Windows95 environments, and are fully backward-compatible with previous generations of standard 1.3Gb and 650Mb media. The Cheetah Series is initially available in jukebox configurations, with one to six high-performance Cheetah Plus drives and capacities up to 670Gb. A dual picker assembly holds two disks at once to improve cartridge exchange performance. An optional NetReady range of optical jukeboxes is available for capacities of 135Gb or more. It connects directly to a local network, creating a Network File System server that provides transparent access to both erasable and write-once disks. Prices start from $8,000 for the 52Gb one- or two-drive single picker jukebox, rising to about $53,000 for a 670Gb dual picker box with either two, four or six drives.