The floppy drive. Dinosaur or or relic. You choose.

[mrtristan]

How many of you still use the floppy drive? I've noticed that macs no longer come with a floppy drive and some of the out of the box manufacturers are also starting to ship floppy free.

I still have one in my computer, but I'm thinking of taking it out, to free up some space and help cool the inside. One less cable and one less power sucking device. I really don't use it, except when I need to use a win98 boot disk to reformat something that I screwed up beyond repair, which doesn't happen that often.

For those of you who build your own boxes, floppy or nay floppy?

[ChrisX]

I don't hardly use the floppy drive and only use it on the Win98 computer for emergencies, a boot startup disk and the anti-virus rescue disk.

I got three computers as Win2000 and can have the option of using a floppy for an emergency. I don't really need to as the "emergency" is already in the Win2000 CD.

I use the CD burner to backup my data. The floppy is dead as a relic.

[energy80s]

I use floppies quite a bit. A lot handier than a CDR if your only storing small files.

[Bob W]

I use floppies quite a bit. A lot handier than a CDR if your only storing small files.

Same here.

[q1aqza]

It's almost a relic. The keyring USB storage devices will probably be the final nail in the coffin.

[energy80s]

That's assuming you want to spend 50 quid on one! Oh and have a USB port on your machine. Never liked USB much, firewire seems a much nicer way of doing things.

Long live the floppy!!

[zzyzzx]

I still use my floppy nearly every day.

[tgpo]

My computer never had a floppy, but even at school we've moved on to Zip drives and CD/RW disks.

[Faustus]

I agree they are out dated, but not having a easy to work with bootable format can be an issue sometimes. For example thought I'd love to just chunk my floppy what do I do next time I need to install a firmware update that must have dos? Burn an entire bootable CD just for it? No thanks. We need a REAL solution or companies that dont do stupid things and write proper updaters before we can truely get rid of the things.

[Karate Media]

Still love the floppy. Great for word docs and text files and other small files, especially at the office and sometimes even at home.

Plus, I'm a packrat and history advocate -- I want to have access to great old programs that are only available on floppy (doesn't happen much, but it does occassionally)

(I also own two record players, one of which I own particularly b/c of the fact that it can play '78s -- it's just a way to remain in touch w/ history, y'know?)

EDIT -- (Oh, and let's not forget the four TRS-80 Color Computers with the external tape drives, the old-school external phone modem -- don't know what speed it's at home, the hand-held Atari 2600 emulator - since I can't find my original one, the broken reel-to-reel tape recorder...ok, maybe I'm more a packrat than a "history advocate"...)

[SLK001]

I don't use my floppy much, but when it is needed, it is invaluable. I still have one machine with a 5.25 disk installed. Both my machines have CD-R/RWs installed, but for quick and easy transporting, a floppy can't be beat (drops in my shirt pocket, too). I don't plan on giving up my floppies anytime soon.

[Gazorgan]

I keep one for flashing BIOS, that's it. I suppose I should make bootable CDRW and be down with it (along with 98SE and W2KPro CAB files and sundry utilities).

[VideoTechMan]

For me, the floppy is pretty much dead. Nowadays if i dont use CD media to transport files, I can even use my memory card that I use in my digital camera to transfer information. And two, i've had problems in the past where I would write information on a floppy, then take it to another computer only to find that it wont read the disk (says it needs to be formatted). Do you remember the days when Windows 3.1 was all on floppies? Mann those were the days....I still actually have that old OS too with all the original floppy disks. Who knows, maybe they will become a collector's item someday..lol. But with so many better alternatives to storing protable media, floppy disks are pretty much dead now, as not many programs utilize it anymore. And two, the computer system I built back in Jan....the floppy drive I put in i took it from an old 486 I had lying around..nice that it still works..hehe, but I am thinking of removing it permantely and put another hard drive in its place. I still dont know why new computer system manufacturers still install the 3.5 floppies when no one will hardly ever use them anymore (except perhaps if you were taking a computer course in school or something). Besides, Windows 2000 and XP wont allow you to make a floppy boot-disk anyway. Floppies were great in the old days, but i think now its time to take them to their computer nursing homes, just like the 5.25 inch floppies have...lol.

VideoTechMan

[Karate Media]

Do you remember the days when Windows 3.1 was all on floppies? Mann those were the days....I still actually have that old OS too with all the original floppy disks. Who knows, maybe they will become a collector's item someday..lol. VideoTechMan

Actually, just a few months ago I helped a friend bring a computer back from the dead and we installed 3.1 on it via floppies -- man, there was like 10 or 12 discs and we had to keep running in and checking on it to see if it need the next disc! No CD-ROM drive, it was the only way to bring it back to life!

And some people already DO consider those floppies a collector's item...trust me...

[WeedVender]

I still use the floppy drive but now imstarting to use those Mini CDRw. They are a bit smaller and carry much more info.. 240 MB to be exact. thats better than any USB storage copacity with cost factored in.

[birdygal]

I use my floppy everyday for backup of my buisness programs data

[SLICK RICK]

My wife uses it alot for school, essays and reports. But I never use it.

SLICK RICK

[negon]

I'm thinkin the floppy is obsolete, more power to those of you who use it, but i'll stick with my 128mb USB. As for the firewire being a better general port, USB is my personal choice because of the availability of USB products. If you need a high-speed device USB 2.0 is the way to go, beating firewire's 400mbit/sec with 480mbit/sec speeds.

[WeedVender]

yeah but its doesnt kick Firewire 800 speeds..

[doctorstrobe]

I recently bought an ASUS Motherboard and it came with a USB flash disc device. You can actually boot off of the thing.
It emulates a floppy drive so you end up with an A: that is 1.44mb
of the flash ram and a C: that has the rest of the memory.
It comes with a version of Free DOS (that's what it was called...)
installed on the A: it so it boots right to a command prompt.

I must say I was impressed.
If more manufacturers come up with these things the floppy's days
are numbered...
There will always be some around for a very long time though.
We still use the old 8 Inch floppy discs at work. We have an old
piece of equipment that uses an old Z80 computer and two 8 Inch
floppies.

[Heavensent]

i think its dead and buried.
no need to use it for enything, if i want to boot to dos for some reason,
i just slide in the win98 cd and make the computer boot with the cd rom drivers, its much quicker this way.
and if i want to install windows xp, i can use smartdrive.exe
from the win98 cd, and make the installation faster.
i have the floppy unplugged for about 2 years now
(and i never looked back !)

[vitualis]

I rarely use it but it is still necessary. If I was just dealing with my own PCs, I would never have to use it at all, but if I ever want to transfer a few quick files (e.g., world processing, etc.) from a work computer to my home computer, the floppy is still the quickest and easiest way to do it.

Sure, I could use a USB memory drive of some sort, but not every PC at work has a USB port in a convenient location (especially the older PCs).

Furthermore, don't underestimate the usefulness of the floppy as a bootdisc. When all else fails, the floppy can resuscitate a PC no matter how old it is (unless it it really THAT old)...

Regards.

[LanEvo7]

Whoever says the floppy is dead should pay a visit to their local school or college.

Floppy drives are nowhere near dead. Businesses and school still use them since text files and spreadsheets don't take up that much space. Its much more cost efficient than equipping all the computers with CDRWs.

I'd say the zip drive will probably go before the floppy does. It really has no place, CDR's are way cheaper and hold more.

Home users probably find it useless since everything comes on cd nowdays. I don't have one on my computer either.

[energy80s]

It's funny that everyone is so happy trying to boot off a CD. I would never dream of doing that. Much handier just sticking in a floppy. I've had more problems with CDR discs being scratched than floppies not reading. Long live my little 3.5" friend!!

Floppy is so dead...

Only people I know to use the 5.25" are the same people who still use 9-pin printers.. for the smaller 3.5" there are more of them, but still not as much...

CD-RW has taken over for me, and if you use UDF formatting you can just drag and drop files like with a floppy and that solves all...

[SatStorm]

I use my floppy. Not much, but I use it.
I don't think it is dead. It has some years ahead IMHO.
For power/end users it is dead. But for the others no.

[bizeebee]

We use them at school all the time. I also use mine at home to transfer small files.

[q1aqza]

That's assuming you want to spend 50 quid on one! Oh and have a USB port on your machine. Never liked USB much, firewire seems a much nicer way of doing things.

Long live the floppy!!

I've seen the smaller 32 MB ones for £20 and that's still easier than carrying a floppy or 20+ floppies to get the equivalent !!

I do still use mine from time to time but only coz it's there !!

[gadgetguy]

I almost never use mine. But I wouldn't consider it extinct yet, outdated but not extinct. My laptop came without a floppy drive, which is interesting since it requires one to upgrade the BIOS.

[rhegedus]

I haven't used mine for ages, probably years. Now that OS (W2K Pro) installation is easier with a bootable CD, there's no need for boot disks.

All new software is supplied on CD, and if you want to transfer small files, there's always e-mail.

Don't see a need for it any more It will go the way of the old 5 1/4" drives. Remember those - didn't you have to flip them over or something?

Regards,

Rob