Mac Forum / General / Hardware / September 2004

> Floppy disk nears obsolescence
>
> Tuesday, September 7, 2004 Posted: 9:58 AM EDT (1358 GMT)
>
> Floppy drives are becoming obselete as different stoarge technologies arrive.
>
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> ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- When Michael McCreary bought three new computers for
> his company, he had no need for one of the oldest and most common computer
> technologies, the floppy drive.
>
> But like many computer customers, he ended up buying floppies anyway. After
> all, they're cheap and he still has a few of the 3.5-inch disks lying around.
>
> "As long as I need those files, I need a floppy drive around. Then I can toss
> them," said McCreary, the president of an eight-employee Atlanta-area real
> estate management company. "The next computers I buy probably won't even have
> a floppy."
>
> Long the most common way to store letters, homework and other computer files,
> the floppy is going the way of the horse upon the arrival of the car: it'll
> hang around but never hold the same relevance in everyday life.
>
> And good riddance, say some home computer users. The march of technology must
> go on.
>
> Like the penny, the floppy drive is hardly worth the trouble, computer makers
> say.
>
> Dell Computer Corp. stopped including a floppy drive in new computers in
> spring 2003, and Gateway Inc. has followed suit on some models. Floppies are
> available on request for $10 to $20 extra.
>
> "To some customers out there, it's like a security blanket," said Dell
> spokesman Lionel Menchaca. "Every computer they've ever had has had a floppy,
> so they still feel the need to order a floppy drive."
>
> A few customers have complained when they found their new computers don't
> have floppy drives, but it's becoming uncommon as they realize the benefits
> of newer technologies, Menchaca said. Almost all new laptops don't come with
> a floppy.
>
> More and more people are willing to say goodbye to the venerable floppy, said
> Gateway spokeswoman Lisa Emard.
>
> "As long as we see customers request it, we'll continue to offer it," she
> said. "We'll be happy to move off the floppy once our customers are ready to
> make that move."
>
> Some people may hesitate to abandon the floppy just because they're so
> comfortable with it, said Tarun Bhakta, president of Vision Computers outside
> Atlanta, one of the largest computer retailers in the South.
>
> At his store, the basic computer model comes with all necessary equipment,
> but no floppy.
>
> "People say they want a floppy drive, and then I ask them, 'When was the last
> time you used it?' A lot of the time, they say, 'Never,"' Bhakta said.
>
> But plenty of regular, everyday computer users don't want to let their
> floppies go.
>
> "For my children, they can work at school and at home. I think they're a
> pretty good idea," said shopper Mark Ordway.
>
> "I just want something simple for me and my husband to use," said Pat
> Blaisdell.
>
> The floppy disk has several replacements, including writeable compact discs
> and keychain flash memory devices. Both can hold much more data and are less
> likely to break.
>
> Even so, floppies have been around since the late 1970s. People are used to
> them. They were the oldest form of removable storage still around.
>
> "There's always some nostalgia," said Scott Wills, an electrical and computer
> engineering professor at Georgia Tech who has held on to an old 8-inch floppy
> disk. "It's a technology I'm glad to be rid of. I'd never label them, and I
> never knew what any of them were until I put them in and looked."
>
> In a sense, it's amazing floppy disks have hung around for this long.
>
> They only hold 1.44 megabytes of space -- still enough for word processing
> documents but little else. By comparison, CDs store upward of 700 megabytes,
> and the flash memory drives typically carry between 64 and 256 megabytes.
>
> And it's been a long time since floppy disks were even floppy. They used to
> come in a bendable plastic casing and were 5.25 inches wide, but Apple
> Computer Inc. pioneered the smaller, higher density disks with its Macintosh
> computers in the mid-1980s.
>
> Then Apple become the first mass-market computer manufacturer to stop
> including floppy drives altogether with the release of their iMac model in
> 1998.
>
> "It's not officially dead, but there's no question it's a slow demise," said
> Tim Bajarin, principle analyst for Creative Strategies, a technology
> consulting firm near San Jose, California. "You had a few people ... who were
> screaming, but in a short time, they adjusted."
>
> It may not be too many years before floppy disks are joined by DVDs.
> Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently predicted the DVD would be obsolete
> within a decade.
>
> Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may
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