Death of the Floppy Disk...RIP

[Jose_R.A.M]

uk.gizmodo.com
30th January 2007
Floppy Disks Get The Chop - R.I.P.

http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q186/Jose_R-A-M/Site%20Story%20Images/th_floppy.jpg

PC World is killing off the floppy disk by announcing that it won't stock any more of them once the existing stock has sold out.

Capable of storing 1.44MB of data, the floppy disk was the blank CD and DVD of the 1980s and early 1990s. Hell, I still have the original Warcraft game which came on the format. You might think that 1.44MB wasn’t a lot of storage - and it wasn’t - but then there were no such things as MP3s or video files, while the Internet and downloading content was in its infancy.


“The sound of a computer’s floppy disk drive will be as closely associated with 20th century computing as the sound of a computer dialling in to the Internet", said Bryan Magrath, commercial director of PC World. "The pace of technological change is relentless and it is now increasingly standard for computer users to transfer data via the Internet or use USB memory sticks, some of which will store the equivalent of 1,000 times the capacity of floppy disk. With that amount of memory available in such a small and convenient device, the floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn’t able to compete.”

Some quick facts:


2 billion floppy disks were sold globally in 1988, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan.

By 2006, this had fallen to 700 million units.

Today, 98% of all PCs in PC World have no floppy, or ‘A’ drive. It will be 100% by this summer.


Continue article from gizmodo and view other floppy facts! (http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/01/30/floppy_disks_get_the_chop_rip.html#more)

Is anyone here using a computer with a floppy drive?

When was the last time any of you used a floppy disk?:)

[666joe]

Sob - how I'll miss load errors and that whirring.....

[carcomptoy]

I don't think I've used one since last spring...there's no point to now with thumbdrives and and Bluetooth and such...kinda nice, but of course it will be missed. Emotionally at least.

[difenbaker]

hehehe.... and Im still using those old old 5-1/4 floppies. :D

actually, I find it an effective and dirt cheap solution for securing word documents, since nobody uses them anymore. Some of my friends even asked me "how do they work?" lol. :D



cheers!

[Jose_R.A.M]

Sob - how I'll miss load errors and that whirring.....

Oh aye. And that amazing quantity of storage! I liked the sound that the computers used to make when searching for a floppy that wasn't there.:D

[Dynamoo]

I use them quite often, primarily as a boot floppy to load something else. I haven't *bought* any since 1999 and our Y2K preparations though.

Although being an old timer, I do just about remember the old 8" floppies with a whopping couple of hundred Kb on them. They were.. well.. crap, actually.

[Jose_R.A.M]

Although being an old timer, I do just about remember the old 8" floppies with a whopping couple of hundred Kb on them. They were.. well.. crap, actually.

I remember those!:D And the ACORN computers we used them on.

[difenbaker]

Although being an old timer, I do just about remember the old 8" floppies with a whopping couple of hundred Kb on them. They were.. well.. crap, actually.

wow! ... and I thought that the 1.2mb floppies that Im using was old already, hehehe... :D

cheers!

[moazam]

i dont have floppy drive in my computer :)

[BenXP]

RIP Floppy :(

I still have a dozen or so 5.25" floppy's that I used to keep my daily journals stored on (whenever I would travel). I still have my trusty 386 with two 5.25" floppy drives and Win 3.11 w/Wordperfect loaded on it in case I need to recover them :)

[carcomptoy]

hehehe.... and Im still using those old old 5-1/4 floppies. :D

actually, I find it an effective and dirt cheap solution for securing word documents, since nobody uses them anymore. Some of my friends even asked me "how do they work?" lol. :D



cheers!
That's quite pathetic!

[stephanie]

That's quite pathetic!

Eeek! That means Im pathetic? hihihihi... I was about to ask Diffy HOW do they work and what they look like, but I changed my mind now. :D

Seriously, I think I have seen those before - maybe just didn't notice it. Hihihi....

[Dynamoo]

One ironic thing about the 3.5" floppy disk is that it's actually quite stiff and square. And no, the metal thing on the end IS not the contact for the card reader.

Going back about 1000 years, at school we used to have a network of Acorn BBC Micros with an RM 380Z fileserver. The 380Z had 400Kb of floppy disk storage available to pupils, divided into 100 4Kb blocks. You used to learn to write REALLY tight code.

And they were really quite complicated - you'd have to know what a "Double Sided, Double Density, Soft Sectored minifloppy" was. And yes, I have used Hard Sectored ones too. A High Density disk had more than a Double Density disk, and there were even Quad Density ones, and of course Single Density. And that's just 5.25" disks. Then there were 3.5", 3" etc etc.

Now consider that Vista requires a 40Gb hard drive with 15Gb of free space.. to do *what* exactly?

[brad]

I haven't had a floppy drive in a PC for years, but the other day I had to do a re-install of Windows XP on one of my computers, and the ONLY way the install would accept a driver for my SATA controller was through a floppy. I had to go and buy a USB floppy drive and a box of disks, which was quite expensive since they are so rare now. I could not have installed XP without a floppy. Thankfully, Vista has drivers for the SATA controller on my laptop, so I didn't have a problem installing that.

[carcomptoy]

Eeek! That means Im pathetic? hihihihi... I was about to ask Diffy HOW do they work and what they look like, but I changed my mind now. :D

Seriously, I think I have seen those before - maybe just didn't notice it. Hihihi....
I didn't mean for it to be too demeaning! I guess I just can't imagine anyone in this generation not having used a floppy drive at all. It's just basically a really old memory card hahaha. That's the only thing I can come up with with regards to a contemporary successor. You just put it into the drive and it's removable storage.I haven't had a floppy drive in a PC for years, but the other day I had to do a re-install of Windows XP on one of my computers, and the ONLY way the install would accept a driver for my SATA controller was through a floppy. I had to go and buy a USB floppy drive and a box of disks, which was quite expensive since they are so rare now. I could not have installed XP without a floppy. Thankfully, Vista has drivers for the SATA controller on my laptop, so I didn't have a problem installing that.Now THAT'S sad for XP to be doing that! There really was no other way?? If you were closer...I could've sent you my USB floppy drive haha.

[Jose_R.A.M]

One ironic thing about the 3.5" floppy disk is that it's actually quite stiff and square. Haha, lol yup. (most users probably wouldn't have ever seen the bigger actual floppy ones to know why)

And no, the metal thing on the end IS not the contact for the card reader. Sometimes, when I was being mischievous, I'd lift the metal part ever so slightly, and it would get stuck in a drive. (I was real naughty when I was around about 7)

Going back about 1000 years, at school we used to have a network of Acorn BBC Micros with an RM 380Z fileserver. The 380Z had 400Kb of floppy disk storage available to pupils, divided into 100 4Kb blocks. You used to learn to write REALLY tight code.


Lol the only code writing I remember was:

10 Print "Inset Title here"
20 Input....yatta yatta yatta...

lol, I was quite into that. ... :D we only had it for a year as the school upgraded all the computers then

Now consider that Vista requires a 40Gb hard drive with 15Gb of free space.. to do *what* exactly?

To store details on what your doing :p

Now THAT'S sad for XP to be doing that! There really was no other way?? If you were closer...I could've sent you my USB floppy drive haha.

My cousin's doing Computer Science (or something like that) and he had to demo an installation of XP and the main crucial thing apparently was this floppy. (had to go to Nation Bookstore as no one we knew had any spare/working floppys)

[carcomptoy]

I guess that's why XP needed a successor...one that wasn't tied to the past.

[bnza8]

the last time i used a floppy disc was in 2005. when i called find my PenDrive. it was only transferring a word document from one computer to the other so it wasnt a hassle though the noise reminded me how annoying it is and how slow it can be.

i also remember back in the late 90's that ive broke a many of the floppies. they would suddenly stop working and all hell just broke loose because all your games or work were on there.

i can still remember talking to my mates about future floppy discs how they would get smaller and with bigger capacities and last longer. lol

can anyone still remember those digital cameras that uses the floppy discs as the memory stick? i can, i used on in 1999 when our school got one. everyone was like, oh wow, and each picture was in like 30-40kb size. it was so cool back then. if those of you do not know what i am talking about then go to this link to find out. http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/panasonic/sd4090-review/index.html the one we had at the school was very similar but not as good as i remember it had a VGA camera or something less than 1.3MP.
lol i just found some more floppy disc digital cameras and you can still buy some. check it out, http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/panasonic/sd4090-review/index.html

ahh the good old days.