Floppies?

[red_jon]

Asher, how's the army of cyborg cleaners going?

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by Asher
That's wonderful, but I fail to see how industrial control applications relate to personal computers that we're obviously talking about here.

Personal computers get used for industrial control applications, that's my point, with a corresponding upgrade cycle that is very different and typically very longer than corporate or personal applications. And eventually those older machines, which may have no other means of getting information off them but a floppy, are going to need data transferred off them, in which case newer machines still need some means of talking to them.

At some point you still have to retain a "lowest common denominator" means of getting stuff from system A to system B. USB floppies aren't bad, but I'm more leery of USB serial ports as some communication drivers don't like them (and serial ports are still widely used on HMI terminals, typically as your first means of communication to set up other protocols). It's all well and good to embrace new technologies, but you can't leave old ones out in the cold when there are lots of existing systems still in play that depend on them.

(I'm sidetracking a bit talking about serial ports, but the increasing tendency of computer makers not to offer those as standard equipment irritates me no end. Floppies aren't as serious that way.)

[Harry Seldon]

I just got a new PC and I didn't even put a floppy on it. My board doesn't even have a floppy disk ide slot on it.

[reds4ever]

I still use floppies to transfer.docs from my (old) laptop to my desktop and vice versa. Surely the very fact that industry (and me) still use them mean they arn't obsolete?

[Asher]

Lots of people use obsolete things. They're still obsolete and painful to use.

Most people use them out of habit, which is a shame.

It will make me a happy boy once floppies vanish from this earth.

For my programming job, I had to port a program that was from 1992, stored on floppies. 15 disks, four of which were corrupt. It took me three days, but I managed to restore all of the information.

Floppies.

[Solver]

Asher, I do generally agree. Floppies are obsolete, old tech and comps suck, etc.

But over here, we still have to use them sometimes. If I have to give someone from some company/university a document, that's usually the way to go. I don't feel like giving it on a CD (once you give the file, it doesn't come back), and they simply don't have the Internet. Hardly anyone here has it, heh.

Although what annoys me is that a floppy also costs money! I mean, it costs nearly as much as a CD-R!

Their stability is awful, though. I have had new floppies crash within a few weeks. BTW, old floppies are great. I still have a bunch that I bought 8 years ago - having carried them all over the place, dropped to the ground, etc, they work.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Asher
Most people use them out of habit, which is a shame.

er, no. Most people use old technology because it is convenient. If you use a computer to perform some specific function, and it works well doing that function, why upgrade?

Not only is it a waste of money, it is a waste of your time and resources, and will be much less efficient at the function until you get used to it.

[Asher]

Floppy drives cost more than a 16MB USB keychain device, which are falling in price rapidly.

Floppies cost as much as CDs.

How is it a waste of time and money to get something cheaper or as cheap as a floppy, but much faster and hold way more, as well have a FAR less chance of corruption?

If you ask me, floppies are inefficient in every way you can think of them: time, money, and resources.

[Solver]

Floppies cost as much as CDs.

CDs cost a bit more here.

[Dis]

I used them to save some files after my hard drive was corrupted by something (I'm guessing a virus). I was unable to boot up windows, but I could go to DOS. I could manually scan through my files and save some of my save games using the copy command (or was it the move command?). I saved them to a floppy.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher
Floppy drives cost more than a 16MB USB keychain device, which are falling in price rapidly.

Floppies cost as much as CDs.

How is it a waste of time and money to get something cheaper or as cheap as a floppy, but much faster and hold way more, as well have a FAR less chance of corruption?

If you ask me, floppies are inefficient in every way you can think of them: time, money, and resources.

My daughters school asked her to bring in a floppy, as part of this years back to school. I presume for saving work, transfering stuff home, etc.

Now our PC at home has USB (as well as a floppy drive) and sounds like having a keychain device would be a nice idea. And Im sure the PC's at school have USB - the school is technologically backward enough I doubt they had many PC's before the USB era.

So do i send the key chain device along, to a classroom teacher who in all likelihood has only a very foggy idea of what USB is? and isnt about to spend time installing anything? And has to go through paperwork to get anything installed? Nah, its good we have our floppy.

[lightblue]

I use a ZIP drive mostly, but largely because my uni's CD-Rs are very old and slow, and they don't like us plugging stuff into the back. And as they all come with ZIPs...

[GePap]

I use floppies all the time in trafering files. Since most of the files I transfer are nowhere near 1 MB anyway, a floppy is more than enough, plus I know that is most commercial places they can take floppies, while any other storage device is iffy.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap
I use floppies all the time in trafering files. Since most of the files I transfer are nowhere near 1 MB anyway, a floppy is more than enough, plus I know that is most commercial places they can take floppies, while any other storage device is iffy.

so, gepap, did you know that i took my first computer class at Stuyvesant? learned to do trivial things in Fortran, on the mini-computer that the alumni association had donated to the school. Comp science (comp lab?) was taught by one of the more hippie math teachers, IIRC. I did NOT join the computer club. I did learn to use a punch card machine, not a skill that has done me much good.

[Harry Seldon]

I did learn to use a punch card machine, not a skill that has done me much good.

It didn't teach you to obsessively number things in order?