HOME PC USERS EMBRACE ONLINE WORLD BUT SEE STORAGE LIMITATIONS AS OBSTACLE

ST. PAUL, Minn. (June 20, 1995) - Although home PC users are moving rapidly
to take advantage of the rich resources available via online services and
the Internet, one in five complains of a lack of adequate storage capacity
to download files, a new 3M survey reveals.

Nearly one third of all home users surveyed download files of up to 2
megabytes - the equivalent of 650 typed pages - on a weekly basis, and a
like number report running out of hard disk space in the process.

The telephone survey of 300 home computer users online was conducted as
part of a 600-person poll of business and consumer online usage patterns,
completed in May for 3M by Fleishman-Hillard Research, St. Louis.

Among the survey highlights:

* Home users surveyed favor commercial online services like America Online,
Prodigy and CompuServe, but almost as many are surfing the Internet and
browsing the World Wide Web.

* A clear majority of those surveyed use online services or the Internet at
least two to three times a week and expect to increase their usage
significantly during the coming months.

* Better than half of those surveyed expect to download larger image and
multimedia files - and do so more often - in the future.

* More than two-thirds - 68 percent - of home users surveyed said they
download information on a weekly or monthly basis, with 60 percent of
users downloading files over 1 megabyte.

* Surprisingly, while roughly half of consumers go online to access various
databases, nearly a third turn to cyberspace to carry on a time-tested
practice: reading newspapers.

"The online experience can be both tantalizing and frustrating for home
users, especially for those interested in sampling its wealth of video and
audio clips, and free application software," said Doug Olson, business
development manager, 3M Data Storage Tape Technology Division.

"The incredible growth of online content is outstripping the already
substantial increases in hard disk storage capacity. In a sense, the
demand for files worth storing is beginning to exceed the 'supply' of hard
disk space on many desktops," Olson said.

Sixty-eight percent of the home PC users queried say that they download
information on either a weekly or a monthly basis, and 53 percent say they
expect the size of their downloads to increase. Nearly two-thirds (60
percent) of those surveyed are downloading files that are 1 megabyte or
greater.

At the same time, more than 20 percent say they have run out of space on
their hard drive while attempting to download a file.

Seventy-six percent of home users said they tap into one or more online
services. Sixty-seven percent access the Internet and 40 percent report
browsing the World Wide Web. Of this group, 68 percent say they use
on-line services or the Internet at least two to three times a week.

3M is the world's largest supplier of branded removable recording media for
data storage applications.

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