Death to the Floppy! Hurrah!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Frogger
How many since USB media came standard (drivers and a device)? 0 or 1

USB media (device) has been a standard for about four years and I know at the very least my 3.5 year old Dell has USB 1.1 ports.

And I'm told that as long as the OS supports USB, you don't actually need drivers. I don't know, I don't need to use USB harddrives.

Apparently if the OS supports USB (Win98SE and newer), the drives handle themselves when connected.

[Kontiki]

The short story, Asher, is that very few people on this planet use only the latest, top-of-the-line hardware like you and your comp-sci buddies. In reality, as people have been repeatedly saying, not having a floppy is a major inconvenience. If you don't believe me, you should take a tour of a bank head office, which probably has more computers in it than nearly anywhere else I can think of, and see how many computers have the ability to do everything you say is just "keeping up with the times".

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kontiki
The short story, Asher, is that very few people on this planet use only the latest, top-of-the-line hardware like you and your comp-sci buddies. In reality, as people have been repeatedly saying, not having a floppy is a major inconvenience. If you don't believe me, you should take a tour of a bank head office, which probably has more computers in it than nearly anywhere else I can think of, and see how many computers have the ability to do everything you say is just "keeping up with the times".

Nobody is going to take the floppies away from the old computers.

The new ones typically don't need them. You're still given the option of installing one, it just doesn't come with one.

I really do have a hard time believing it'll be a major inconvenience to lots of people, seeing how cheap floppy drives are how there's ample expansion space for them, and especially considering how popular the internet is and USB in modern computers.

Yes, there are old computers that need floppies. Yes, you can still buy floppies and floppy drives. No, it should not come by default anymore. Yes, it's obsolete. And yes, it's a pain trying to salvage information from floppies.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Frogger
Every single computer I've ever seen at school has been a "legacy" computer by your standards. Not one of them has a CD-RW drive, and some just recently got CD-ROM drives. I'm serious here.

CD-burning takes longer than floppy writing by a factor of about 10X if the file is of average size for documents.

Windows XP. Hah. Windows 95, Windows 3.1, Windows 98 are all far more prevalent. The real old machines that run experiments have DOS 5.0 or something.

So what is the problem here? You just demonstrated that your school doesn't upgrade its hardware often - the fact that newer machines won't be coming out with floppy drives won't affect you at all.

[ixnay]

My floppy drive broke last semester and I was too lazy to fix it until after christmas. I would have thought that would be a problem since my CS class required me to turn in my programs on a floppy. It actually was less of a hassle, though, as I simply either put them on the network so I could access them in the lab and copy it to a floppy there to turn in.

Before it broke, I had one occasion where I copied my program to my floppy and took it to my lab, only to find that it had become corrupted. So, I had to run back to my room, recopy the file, and run back to the lab to get it turned in on time.

[Asher]

Originally posted by ixnay
My floppy drive broke last semester and I was too lazy to fix it until after christmas. I would have thought that would be a problem since my CS class required me to turn in my programs on a floppy. It actually was less of a hassle, though, as I simply either put them on the network so I could access them in the lab and copy it to a floppy there to turn in.

Before it broke, I had one occasion where I copied my program to my floppy and took it to my lab, only to find that it had become corrupted. So, I had to run back to my room, recopy the file, and run back to the lab to get it turned in on time.

They require you to turn it in on a floppy?

My CS classes usually require me to use the "submit" command. I log in remotely, type: submit -c (classnumber) -a (assignment number) *

My really ancient profs will ask for it to be emailed.

[Asher]

On a side note, my university doesn't permit students access to the floppy drive.

It's too risky. (seriously)

[JohnT]

Oops.. DP

[JohnT]

"I really do have a hard time believing it'll be a major inconvenience to lots of people"

A lot of people are telling you of the fact that they will be inconvenienced, but once again, your beliefs refuse to allow them credence.

[Asher]

Originally posted by JohnT
A lot of people are telling you of the fact that they will be inconvenienced, but once again, your beliefs refuse to allow them credence.

Pop quiz: What's the difference between an inconvenience and a major inconvenience?

It's an inconvenience for me to pay for a drive I haven't used in over three years. It's an inconvenience for me when I need to deal with people whining about lost data on their floppies and begging me to help. It's an inconvenience to me when people give me files on a floppy and ask for help with them. It's an inconvenience to me when organizations rely on floppies as a primary method of data transfer (as you guys have so nicely pointed out in this thread), since they're slow, tiny in capacity, and easily corrupted.

If people really need a floppy drive, they can install one in a vacant drive bay on their computer. That's not a major inconvenience.

I really do believe a minority of people buying brand new Dells will require the use of a floppy drive in 2003.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by Asher
Dino: Yes, CD-RWs have existed for many years now.

Yeah but it is cheapear to use cd-rs and throw them away. You can get cd-r for les than $1, and cd-rws cost over $10.

[JohnT]

Asher, talking to you about computers is akin to talking to CivNation about God. Y'all have your own ideas what is best for everybody else (despite their protestations, which you either ignore or claim is "crying"), and all the arguments and facts in the world isn't going to change either of your minds.

Without any experience in the real world of end-users in the corporate sphere, you have decreed we're all wrong. Are you sure you're not some bizarre DL of Sava's?

[Asher]

Asher, talking to you about computers is akin to talking to CivNation about God. Y'all have your own ideas what is best for everybody else (despite their protestations, which you either ignore or claim is "crying"), and all the arguments and facts in the world isn't going to change either of your minds.

John...there is simply no way you can argue that floppies are "best" for anyone. They're necessary for some people due to the issue of backwards compatibility, and it'll ALWAYS be like that until someone kicks the trend.

1.44MB is TINY, John. a 2-word Word document is 20KB right now, and in Office 11 that size will more than double when it moves to XML.

Floppies are a relic. A necessary relic for some, but a relic nonetheless. You can argue you still need one -- and good on you. Install one. Don't force everyone to use them like you're arguing everyone is forcing you to use them.

Worst comes to worst, you can get a USB-Floppy adapter and be happy in both worlds.

Without any experience in the real world of end-users in the corporate sphere, you have decreed we're all wrong.

First, John, let me tell you how much it annoys me for people like yourself to go on and on about real world experience in a matter where it's completely unrelated.
Second, I understand some people may still need to use floppies, I haven't said you're wrong about that. Perhaps you need to pay closer attention to what's being said, or maybe you just need more real world experience in reading comprehension.

You can still get floppies and floppy drives. This move by Dell and other OEMs is a move to try to get people away from the floppy medium and onto more modern alternatives with far lower rates of data corruption, far higher data capacities and speeds, and move away from the relics of computer past. Yes, I'm "arrogant" enough to assert if we didn't have floppies it'd be better for everyone right now -- I don't see why it wouldn't be. If we didn't have floppies right now we wouldn't be having this conversation, people would be using 64MB USB drives instead of 1.44MB floppies.

Are you sure you're not some bizarre DL of Sava's?

That's not how it works, John, I was here before Sava...

[Asher]

Hey John, check this out.

A compact USB floppy drive: http://shop2.outpost.com/product/3426073

Problem solved, now all new computers without a floppy drive magically have a floppy drive. And it's small enough to fit in your pocket.

[Wraith]

--"There's virtually no savings per unit,"

I'd disagree. I don't know how familiar you are with Dell's business model, but it's pretty simple. For destops they want to cut costs as much as possible, keep prices low, and sell in volume. An extra $5 to $10 a unit can be a big deal, and that's before support costs. Margins on desktops are pretty thin.

Besides, you can still order the bloody things. They're just not going to be part of the standard configuration for the desktop line.

--"you should take a tour of a bank head office,"

Floppies on the desktop is the least of the computer problems there...

--"Without any experience in the real world of end-users in the corporate sphere,"

Well, none of the corporations I've worked in have been all that attached to their floppies. Course, I've mostly worked in the tech industry, and before that drafting. AutoCAD files never were really floppy friendly.

The corporate sphere is actually the area I'd expect the least resistance to this. I don't know of any that lock down USB ports so the keydrives can't be used, and they are a lot more useful than floppies these days. And if they're buying any number of new systems they've probably got some sort of a network in place.
It's the home users who are keeping their older computers that I'd expect to see the resistance from. And they can click the "add a floppy" option.

Personally, I'd love to get rid of most of the legacy from my next machine. No PS2 port, no serial ports, no parallel port. Give me some USB and Firewire ports and a 10/100/1000 network port. A DVI connection for video and an optical out for audio. Get rid of the ATA in favor of SATA. Other than that, keep it quiet and fairly low power.

--" 1.44MB is TINY, John. a 2-word Word document is 20KB right now, and in Office 11 that size will more than double when it moves to XML. "

Heh. You're right, but the sad part is you seem proud of it ^_^ This is a sign of Microsoft bloat, ie. poor coding practicies. It's something to be dealt with and worked around (since they obviously have no intention of fixing it).

Wraith
Hardware /nm./: the part of the computer that you can kick.