"...Industry leaders Compaq, Microsoft, Philips Electronics and Sony today announced a joint effort called Mt. Rainier designed to fuel continued adoption of CD ReWritable as the removable medium of choice for data storage and archiving in a PC environment. The overall objective of the Mt. Rainier group is to increase ease-of-use and compatibility of CD-RW by enabling Operating System support of CD-RW drives.

"Clearly, CD-RW has struck a responsive chord among consumers," said Eggert Gudmundsson, business development manager, Philips Optical Storage North America, which is coordinating the Mt. Rainier group. "We expect industry shipments of CD-RW drives to exceed 30 million this year. Experts predict that more than 3 billion CD-R/RW discs will ship this year. Based on such consumer demand, it is natural that Philips, together with other industry leaders, would take steps to ensure that the format is as easy-to-use and intuitive as possible. Our work with the Mt. Rainier group will help ensure the continued success of the CD-RW format."

The Mt. Rainier group will build on the success of CD-RW by:
- Enabling Operating System Support for CD-RW hardware, allowing clear standardization of drive function and commands.
- Enabling "background formatting," which will allow users to format their CD-RW discs more efficiently, without waiting.
- Ensuring greater compatibility by achieving native support within the Operating System. This will eliminate users' dependence on proprietary read drivers to ensure compatibility between PCs.

The benefits to the consumer will include an overall enhanced "drag and drop" experience with even greater ease-of-use and compatibility with the worldwide installed base of more than 300 million CD-ROM drives. The PC industry will benefit based on a reduced overall system cost with less need for legacy support; additional functionality and continued market demand.

More info at http://www.mt-rainier.org/

In addition to the four core companies, the following companies have announced their support for the initiative: NEC, Samsung, Lite-On, Acer, Ricoh, Pacific Digital, Ahead Softwar, Software Architects,Oak Technology, Phoenix Technologies and Adaptec (Roxio)..."