Do people still use floppy disks?

[Thrax]

The How do you sit in front of you computer? thread got me thinking.

What does you computer desk look like? Messy with floppy disks scattered around...

Are there people out there still using floppy disks?

I have two computers. A two year old VAIO MX and a four year old Power Mac G4. Neither one has a floppy disk drive. I haven't even touched a floppy disk in years.

Apple dropped the floppy disk drive from all of its models in 1999. Sony and Dell are slowly eliminating floppy disk drives from their computer lines. Fewer and fewer portables come with floppy drives.

Add to that the ubiquity of CD-RW drives and the fact that media for them cost less than floppy disks and hold up to 500 times more data, and I can't understand why anyone would still use floppy disks. Not to mention increasingly common DVD+-R/RW drives.

So, do you still use floppy disks? And if you do, why?

[EightOh]

My digital camera outputs pics to floppy format, and it's extremely convenient to just pop the pictures in and check them out. Aside from that, there's no reason to use them, though.

[RZetlin]

Yes, I still use floppy disk.

It's still faster than burning CDs when dealing with small files.

[LazyReaper]

For word and text files for School, I find that the floppy disks are quite useful. They are smaller, but they are also quite faster and more efficient to store on disk when it comes to transporting small files around with you.


-Aximlli-

[Delthayre]

I still make extensive use of 3.5" floppy disks. Part of this is not having a CD burner before, well, Monday. They're also, so far as I'm concerned, faster and more convenient for me.

[RKillian]

Burning a CD to bring a word document or picture to school is a huge waste. Also, some of us have computers measuring their speed in megahertz. Burning a CD for everything is not only impractical but many times impossible. It's kind of like the whole PS2/parallel/serial/gameport versus USB comparison. Manufacturers might be oblivious to this, but, *GASP*, some computers don't support USB 2.0!

As I type this, I use the following computers:

Intel Pentium 4 (2400 mhz)
AMD K6-2 (500 mhz)
Intel Pentium Pro (200 mhz!)

[Tienshin]

I hardly ever use them anymore. But occaisionally I need to make a copy of a MS office application document they come in pretty handy...but I tend to back up documents in bulk to a CD.

[Chris Wood]

Today I only use floppies when I have to pass a file on to someone else when an internet connection is not present.

However, I remember well the good old days when an entire game program (killer CGA graphics and all) would be contained on a single 5.25" floppy.

[Good Ol' Batmanuel!]

I still use them, so I guess I'm a people.

[sl4]

I haven't used a floppy disk in years.

In other news...yay, another Mac user! :anime: That brings up the count to.....4.

[Magwheel]

My Toshiba (laptop) has a floppy drive, but I don't use it much lately. Like Desslar, if I want to get some small files for someone who doesn't have the Net, floppies are handy. they're only good for small files, and they don't last forever, but they suit my needs well enough. Oh, and I know several people with OLDer computers, so it's good to have in my case. But for backups, I'm grateful for CDRWs

I remember back in the day (late 90s) when my high school had a T1 connection and my parents had no Net at all, I'd bring floppies to school , fill them with winamp skins, and install them at home I got up to 64 of them onto that computer before the next format came along. now I have 3

ah the momories.

[Rosert Gnimhar*]

I haven't used a floppy disk in years.

In other news...yay, another Mac user! :anime: That brings up the count to.....4.

LOL!!! I actually had a Mac, couldn't get into it though.

As for floppies.....I actually have one sticking out of my computer right now looking at me. And I have a BUNCH of stuff on it.

So yea, I still use them; atleast one that I keep using over and over.


Peace out!

RG*

[Bubblegum Girl]

I still use floppies(Even though the proper name are hard disks because the disks are hard not floppy!) just in case if I have keep my files from getting deleted.

[The Detective]

First let me say that when I wrote that I was just trying to think of stuff that might be on a computer desk - floppy disks popped in my mind first.

And before I answer the question lets review: My computer is five years old, self built and given to my family by a friend of my dads. Did ya' get the five years old part? Huge floppy disk drive right on front though it does have a CD drive. Oh and the entire Hardy drive is backed up on a stack of about ten floppy disks. AND the comp is making a trip to the shop to get another hard drive put in; things are pretty when you're only Hard drive dips below the 100 meg level.

[Psycho Fox]

I remeber my Amiga 1000 and how you needed to give it the kick start (ROM) on disk before even booting the operating system.

So do I still use disketts?

Well I have disk drives on my SNES,Genny,ect for cart back up and I still have disketts for my older computers so yhea.

Other then that I use them to move small files around. I've used them to install drivers onto computers and that is nice since some older computers NEED CD drivers installed to read the CD same with use Firewire,USB,ect.

[RKillian]

They're called CD-RWs for a reason, you know. The days of write once are long gone.

Sorry, I live in a world where it's easier and more reliable to send a file to A:/ than to load up a burner program, hope it recognizes my drive, let it write for 5 minutes (4 of which is a table of contents), then pray it works later. No offence, but a floppy disc, even with it's space limitations, is still more convenient for me.

That's another thing. I think that all non-hot swappable external ports should have disappear if only because they're potentially dangerous when people don't know any better.

Dangerous? On what planet? If you can't plug a device into your parallel port, you shouldn't be using a computer. I've caused more shorts with 2 USB devices this year than hundreds of devices on five differeent ports over the past decade.

Oh, and yknow you're throwing away the whole backwards compatibility philosophy that personal computing was built upon, right?

I still use floppies(Even though the proper name are hard disks because the disks are hard not floppy!)

Wrong. Open the casing and inside it's a floppy disk. The term "hard disk" refers to your 3.5 (and some cases 5.25) inch IDe/SCSI drive.

[RKillian]

You realize that both Windows and Mac OS have, for several years, let users copy files to CD-R/RWs the same way that they copy files to floppies? And third party software that does the same thing - and more - has been around for longer.

I noticed the DirectCD feature as early as Windows 98. It was incredibly slow and usually managed to corrupt the discs. Why would I pay for 3rd party software when floppy drivers have been standard issue for almost 2 decades?

Plugging in or unplugging a non-hot swappable device while the computer is on. That can cause big problems and most users have no idea that they aren't supposed to do that.

What problems, besides the device not working?

There must be something wrong with your motherboard if your USB devices are causing shorts. I have never heard of anyone having major problems with USB.

Well now you have.

Both Intel and Microsoft have practically begged computer makers to drop legacy ports (floppy, parallel, serial, et al.) in order to make them more reliable. And studies show that legacy-free PCs are indeed more reliable.

Oh, so Microsoft, lord of random crashes, is now the Law Giver of Computerdom? This is the same Microsoft that corrupted web documents so they'd appear broken on Netscape. This is the same Microsoft that downloads your mail, along with any virus attached to it, through Outlook. This is the same Microsoft that eliminated the safe data recovery of MS-DOS. The list of "improvements" goes on and on.

Neither Intel nor Microsoft were interested in reliability. The issue here is cost, and it costs their Taiwanese chipset makers an extra $0.01 per thousand parellel port as opposed to USB. Show me actual studies that prove your point, and I'll consider it.

If what's being said about the new Windows file system and compatibility proves true, I can't wait to hear every one of the port bashers scream out of the other side of their mouth...

[Tanooki]

of course i still use the floppy disk! it's an essential part of my computer. when i had a class called "advanced microcomputer applications" at least five floppies were required. besides, even though i have a burn drive, i have yet to use it. mainly due to the facts that A) don't know how and B) have no use for it

Falcon

[Sir Gatts]

I haven't had to use an floppy 3.5" for at least an few years as most of my backup work is done through CD-R and CD-RW. Just about all PC computers today and of even five years ago would have some form of an CD based ROM drive, allowing for an wide range of ROM compatibility.

For computers that are without CD writing drives and requires data to be backup, I usually transfer that data through an LAN connection if possible. Or if not, I would then use an second Hard Drive. Then an second computer equipped with an CD-RW drive would store that data to CD Disc ROM.

[jeffrey 228]

Well when I say I don't use a floppy, I don't use one anymore, but I only use a Zip Drive, and yes sometime in 2004 many of the ready made computers will now have Zip Drives manily the 250 version like I have for those needed back ups when your computer does dead.