Floppy drives are no longer needed!

[hyper7]

Thats actually a pretty damn good idea... I'd probably have to go out and get a new keyboard if one came out like that.

There are alot of keyboards like that already out. My imac came with one and when that one crapped out we got another one with a built in usb port by coincidence.

 

[Elledan]

Haha I was raised around the time of yellow/black, so I was already 10 or so with 3.1 and 95. Dude, if you remember the beauties of seeing SVGA? Haha, i guess I would somewhere in the middle (old enough to remember my years of P1 + 95).

SVGA? Hah! I was happy to have EGA, although I usually used CGA with games (Stunts ), because it got me a couple extra FPS.

Let's just say that anything and everything goes on the USB stick (projects, essays, midterms, presentations, firefox bookmarks, temp backup for friends, etc.)

I've actually considered buying a USB drive for backup purposes, but at the moment my Zip drive is working just fine for this purpose (250 MB is plenty for even the biggest projects I'm working on).

As far as I'm concerned, Zip drives and similar are the only viable replacements for FDDs at the moment (until we get our MRAM disks and who knows what else).

 

[MicroUK]

For the cost of the drive ($5-7.00)

Dell wanted £20 ($37 US) to put one in my system !!

No floppies are fine when things are going well.. but as an old DOS user i feel safer having one !! + On some 'home' Dells the USB ports are hard to access - being under a flap an all.. Much better on their business offerings though.

 

[kirbyrj]

I still think the Floppy will live until WinXP and the "Insert driver disk" is gone. No matter how much you can emulate a floppy in BIOS or whatever, it's still "easier" for most people to slap in the floppy when it asks for it.

USB on keyboard is a good idea . I might have to look at that for the next keyboard I buy .

When thumb drives are $1 for 32-64 megs and when they get lost I don't feel like I lost a lot of cash if I can't find it or it gets stolen...then I'll ditch the floppy .

 

[aerithchylde]

The Dell I just got did not have a floppy drive, and I don't care. the last couple of years I have been planning building a new PC and just don't see the need for a floppy anymore. Yes when I have my old P1 with Win95 it was necessary, but it isn't anymore. Of coarse if I was to get a floppy, I would get this one.
http://coolerguys.com/840556059004.html

 

[MicroUK]

The Dell I just got did not have a floppy drive, and I don't care. the last couple of years I have been planning building a new PC and just don't see the need for a floppy anymore. Yes when I have my old P1 with Win95 it was necessary, but it isn't anymore. Of coarse if I was to get a floppy, I would get this one.
http://coolerguys.com/840556059004.html

thats a pretty nice solution to the debate !! shame they couldn't squeeze a USB port on there!!

 

[chrisf6969]

The Dell I just got did not have a floppy drive, and I don't care. the last couple of years I have been planning building a new PC and just don't see the need for a floppy anymore. Yes when I have my old P1 with Win95 it was necessary, but it isn't anymore. Of coarse if I was to get a floppy, I would get this one.
http://coolerguys.com/840556059004.html

Monarch Computers has them for $16 (silver/grey) the black is $26

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=170109

I order a silver one for my Lian Li, and got a black one off the forums for my Shuttle. (click for picture installed)

 

[MrMonty]

The first step in killing floppies is putting a USB port on every keyboard.
This will quadruple the convenience of thumb drives because you don't have to crawl behind your desk, or crouch down to plug in your USB drive. Just pop it in the keyboard and away you go.

Too bad the only thing more reliable than the floppy drive I've had for 8 years is the keyboard I've had for 10. Start a thread on keyboards and you'll have people ranting about some 20 year old IBM click keyboard that they'll use until you pry it from their cold dead hands.

I was floppy-less until I needed to use a Win2k repair disk as well as updating my motherboard BIOS. Which, I'll add, is a year old and doesn't support booting from a USB mass storage device.

Monty

 

[elm669]

step out of your nerd world and realize the average home consumer as well as some schools, elementary and college, require floppy's for different documents. In my college classes the professor does the lecture from the front of the room on powerpoint. You can not physically reach behind the computer for USB access because it's locked, so he'll save his presentations on our floppy's. I also work for a law firm that is constantly trading documents on paper with a copy of it on a floppy. These floppy's are always getting lost in transition, so do we really want to get loosing thumb drives every day when we can get a pack of 25 floppy's for a few bucks? Floppy's are what most consumers first experienced so why change it if it ain't broke?

Look, thumb drives are great, I have myself a 256mb one that I use constantly between work school and home. But even though the average [H] browser here may find them obsolete now, somewhere in real life outside of our house, floppy's are being used and almost required. They're louder and slower, but they work for everybody. I built my system with a floppy that I've used once or twice, and that's when my two younger brothers gave me their floppy's to print their paper that they put on it. Do I really want them fiddling around the back of their computer with my USB drive? no. Floppy's work.

Agreed, With using my laptop at school I wouldn't be able to survive without them

Too bad the only thing more reliable than the floppy drive I've had for 8 years is the keyboard I've had for 10. Start a thread on keyboards and you'll have people ranting about some 20 year old IBM click keyboard that they'll use until you pry it from their cold dead hands.

Still using my 5 year old hp wired ball mouse

 

[GlobalFear]

|*1|\/||*

 

[Vapor1000]

As Long As These "NEW TOP OF THE LINE" motheboards come out with Floppy Connectors on them... im gona contenue to use my computer to its fullest (fullest includes its floppy capability)...

 

[chronic9]

Floopys are still used by majority of students at the college that i work at. about 6 - 8 people come to me asking if their files can be restored from the dead floopy disc that they have. (iam a computer tech at the school). I always tell them stop using this crap and go out and buy a 30$ pen drive and forget about it, it wont break as easily and stores a crap load more. Some people cant afford to spend 30$ on a pen drive, but i think its worth the cost, since all of your school work and stuff is stored on it. I personally have a 512mb cruzer and its not big enough. I store so much stuff on it, i cant imagine being without at work, heck i download episodes of LOST taht i missed and transfered them to the pen drive to watch it at work. I think iam going to buy a 1Gb cruzer and start watching dvdrips at work now.

Long live the USB pen drive!!!
floopys suck and are old as hell, but hey some day people will convert.

 

[{NG}Fidel]

When you install XP with Sata Raid HDDS you need to boot with a floppy or Change the XP CD rom to acomadate it.

 

[Lord of Shadows]

I use a floppy drive because I already have one...

 

[chronic9]

i have a floopy drive specificaly for that reason, since some of the PCs @ home dont support USB boot devices. when ever i need to use this ancient technology, i just plug it in and go. Once iam done, i unplug and place it back in its drawer.

 

[kirbyrj]

Start a thread on keyboards and you'll have people ranting about some 20 year old IBM click keyboard that they'll use until you pry it from their cold dead hands.
Monty

haha...I know people who have stockpiled those IBM keyboards just in case the one they are using now dies on them.

 

[Y2K SE]

As long as there is an installed base of older systems that have floppy drives, there will be a need to have a floppy drive in new systems, if only for the sole purpose of creating diagnostic diskettes and copying small amounts of data. My Toshiba notebook didn't include an internal floppy, but I installed one in it so that I can create diskettes from image files I keep on the hard drive. Its just so much easier and faster to make a diskette with WDDIAG/WDCLEAR on it than it is to try to make and use a bootable USB flash drive.

For newer systems, I don't even bother with booting from a USB drive. I use BartPE to boot into a WinXP environment from CD.

Start a thread on keyboards and you'll have people ranting about some 20 year old IBM click keyboard that they'll use until you pry it from their cold dead hands.

I'm up to five years on my IBM keyboard.