Floppies?

[red_jon]

I reckon they'll wind up recontinuing floppy drives. Too many people still use them.

[Asher]

They still make them, they just don't come by default anymore.

[MattH]

I have a feeling my computer is f'ed up, the flash utility that came with the mobo complains about corrupted files, after reinstall, re-download, etc. I used to like my A7N8X .

[Lefty Scaevola]

How expesnive the the aprrox 50mb memory keys that plug into a usb port.

[Asher]

Newegg.com has a 64MB USB 2.0 memory key that is $27.50US: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...ion=64MB%2CUSB

[MattH]

Dell mid-range PCs still ship with them link

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
And, of course UR, the fact of the matter is -- if you're using old computers, you use old technology. How profound of you.

Therefore, floppies have lots of practical uses in the Real World, where businesses can't and/or won't upgrade their wintel boxes every 2 or 3 years.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Therefore, floppies have lots of practical uses in the Real World, where businesses can't and/or won't upgrade their wintel boxes every 2 or 3 years.

USB has been shipping on every PC for 4-5 years.

So if business won't upgrade their wintel boxes every 4-5 years, they won't be in business for long anyway.

[MattH]

Or 128MB for $~35 pricegrabber

[MattH]

You can run Word and Excel just as well on a 4 year old computer.

[Asher]

True, to an extent.

My dad's company (although it's a huge corporation) replaces all 40,000 desktop PCs every two years like clockwork.

Even the retirement home I work at and the small stair-making business I work at don't have PCs older than 3 years.

[red_jon]

Our b&b's pc is still on windows 3.1.

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by Asher
So if business won't upgrade their wintel boxes every 4-5 years, they won't be in business for long anyway.

You really have no concept of upgrade cycles on computers running industrial-control applications, do you? (But then, most of the high-tech industry doesn't, I reckon) I've come across SCADA applications still running on 386 processors and I'm sure there's older stuff out there yet. If there's no payback to an upgrade on a system like that, it isn't done, period.

The first factory (pulp mill) I worked at had its entire woodroom control package (the interface to the PLCs, that is) running on two 386 PCs (w/o ethernet, as the communication to the PLC was via RS-232, another technology that new computer makers are loathe to support) and the software was already obsolete and the company who made it out of business when I got there (in 1996). It still ran 5 more years before one of the PCs finally died and they had no choice but to upgrade it and invest in a new control package. That was a substantial investment and it didn't make the woodroom run any better (thus no payback), because the underlying PLC system didn't change, it was only the operator interface that had to change.

Scenarios like that are not uncommon in industrial control applications. Floppy drives and serial ports are a must in our line of work.

(EDIT: they might even have been 286's. They'd been in use for about 3-4 years before I got there, what year did 386's hit the market?)

[Asher]

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

I have no doubt that many industries don't upgrade all their computers, they use what works. Hence why so many programs are still in COBOL these days. Which is also why you can still get floppy drives and floppies if you want, but it doesn't mean we should be keeping them around still on new machines.

Floppies are just totally obsolete, painfully so. It actually costs more money to make a floppy disk these days than a CD-RW. They're slow, very prone to corruption, expensive to make, and have a very very small capacity.

Eventually they'll get kicked out the door for 99.99% of users, and that has already started. The people with a severe aversion to change here should just get used to that.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Asher
Those of us fortunate enough to not live in the stoneage find them quite obsolete and pity those who must use them.

Wow, and I thought those households in third-world countries with no electricity, immunizations or running water were bad. Do you mean to tell us that some people still rely on a portable storage medium that can only hold 1.44 MB of information? That's terrible.