http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6314251.stm Well thats the end of that for joe public how long will it be before the online retailers stop selling em?
Tis a sad day for a faithful format tbh. The real problem is that they're simply not practical in the broadband age. You can almost download 1.44MB faster than you can transfer it to a floppy...
geez.. havent used a floppy in ages, dont even have any drives or disks.... would rather use a usb or cd/rw or even the internet..
I like that. Seriously. Floppy icon is so deeply associated with "save" as possible. An icon has become an icon (pun intentional).
i would still have a floppy drive in my machine because when everything goes belly up, you have something to fall back on.
But when have you killed all your CD/DVD drives at the same time? What could you really do with a floppy as-is?
I hate floppy drives. But I do use them. I use them to upgrade BIOS'es nice and easily, I use them to install drivers that have to be installed on floppies, and I use them to fill up my bin. I hope we see companies take USB sticks or bootable CD's to the point at which floppies are at now, i.e. totaly easy to use for the nitty gritty tasks that generally required floppy. As for me, I'll keep using floppy for those arduous tasks untill floppy no longer exists or has support.
I'd actually like to see the end of optical media altogether, but otherwise I'm with you. I'd love to see a standardized flash-based media that you could count on every computer having. CDs and DVDs require a great deal more care in handling than the trusty old floppy, but the floppy is too small. USB flash drives are pretty much at this point now, but since movies and software are still being distributed on optical disks we plainly aren't all the way yet. As for the floppy, it's been three years since I've owned a computer with a floppy drive. And as it turns out I need to get my hands on one now or I'll never get Zone66 running.
What do you mean "almost"? Even 56k gave floppy speeds a run for their money. Good riddance. I've hated them since... I think sixth grade or so, when I had to run home from school three times in an afternoon because the damn things kept getting corrupted for whatever reason. Mind you, I still have a USB floppy drive around somewhere (actually, my dad has it right now for whatever reason), but the only thing I've used it for that I can think of is SATA drivers on old or finnickey motherboards. Come to think of it, I really could use it again for that reason, but you'd think that if the total hack that is OSx86 can see the hard drive (as can Vista, several Linuxes, and anything else I've cared to try), XP certainly should. Gah... I wish osx86 worked better, but Ubuntu won out. I never use that machine anyways so I don't really care. What timing... just heard something about a floppy disk in whatever it is I'm listening to right now (something from RAtM). Heh. Anyways, long live thumb drives. They've got that same plug it in and add storage of floppies that CD-Rs never had, and are certainly technically superior in every way imaginable. Maybe I'll use that write protect hole in the corner to put one on my keychain just to make some sort of retro statement. I'm sure it'll go great next to the 8MB SIMM Just need an old 286 and I'll be all set.
It was a love hate relationship with them, all my floppy disks went corrupt like second time I formated them. I maybe have two good disks. And one drive laying around somewhere. What I love about them is the mechanics of the drive. From putting the disk in hearing & feeling that *click* and you know it's good. To the sound it makes when it tries to read or write. But usually fails. Speaking of this, I might even put one in my next build, just for kicks. Also it might be nice to have around in case I want to load my Color Classic or Mac SE with programs.
The problem I've faced with using the floppies is that you can't really ever say if a drive decides to work and if a floppy is corrupted/bothers to work. They were actually almost usable when I had to update bioses and such at work, as I knew for sure the drives and floppies were ok. Just a while ago a FDD-drive would've become in need when I needed to install a XP to my new rig. Didn't have one because I dumped all my 6 drives earlier this year because I simply didin't know which ones work and which don't and didn't bother to test I really hope they would have became totally useless already years ago. Worst case possible is the current - You simply need them sometimes.