The Floppy Keeps Selling and Selling

[Hooch Tan]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8646699.stm' target='_blank'>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/...ine/8646699.stm</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"However, Verbatim, a UK manufacturer which makes more than a quarter of the floppies sold in the UK, says it sells hundreds of thousands of them a month. It sells millions more in Europe. "We've been discussing the death of the floppy for 14 years, ever since CD technology first started coming on strong," says Verbatim spokesman Kevin Jefcoate."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1272475014.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>The memories the 3.5" floppy elicits are wonderful and date me.&nbsp; There is a generation to whom floppy disks are as archaic as 8-track tapes and vacuum tubes.&nbsp; In their heyday, they were capacious and useful, much like flash drives are now.&nbsp; They also were so cheap that passing them around and giving them away was of little concern.&nbsp; I suspect that in the personal computing world, floppy disks are largely dead thanks for flash drives and the cloud.&nbsp; It is for specialized applications that they are still around.&nbsp; Certain equipment that have a life span of decades, instead of years, still use the disks, and as rugged as these things are, they do need replacing once in a while.&nbsp; I am glad they are mostly gone though; their transfer speeds are agonizingly slow.&nbsp; Anyone who still uses them better stock up!&nbsp; There is no telling when the other manufacturers will stop making them entirely!</p>

[NeilE]

I have fond memories of taking a stack of single-side 3.5" floppies and using my drill to put another hole in the corner of the disks to turn them into double-sided 3.5" floppies :)

Neil

[Jason Dunn]

I have fond memories of taking a stack of single-side 3.5" floppies and using my drill to put another hole in the corner of the disks to turn them into double-sided 3.5" floppies

Hehe - same here! Only I had a little punch tool that made it easier.

Dude, we're OLD. :eek:

[Bob Christensen]

Hehe - same here! Only I had a little punch tool that made it easier.

Dude, we're OLD. :eek:

Oh, not so old... I remember using the 5 1/4 floppies that held a whopping 360kb!

[Jason Dunn]

Oh, not so old... I remember using the 5 1/4 floppies that held a whopping 360kb!

I remember using those too, and being excited at the "amazing" 1.44 MB of storage on a 3.5" disk, thinking "Wow, that's SO MUCH storage!".

So I'm still old, but not as old as some. :D

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Hey, at least you didn't have to put up with 8" floppies...

[Hooch Tan]

I remember using those too, and being excited at the "amazing" 1.44 MB of storage on a 3.5" disk, thinking "Wow, that's SO MUCH storage!".

Yeah, it was a lot of storage, but it took around a minute to access all of it. It does remind me of two things. First, when computers would start up with a grinding while the drive did disk seek. Then, the regular clack, clack, clack while it was reading the disk!

[Reid Kistler]

Hey, at least you didn't have to put up with 8" floppies...

Still keep a handful of 8" around - simply because otherwise none of the youngsters will believe that such a beast even existed! :cool:

[Reid Kistler]

Anyone who still uses them better stock up! There is no telling when the other manufacturers will stop making them entirely!


Recall seeing a recent news article proclaiming The End of The Floppy due to fact that Sony had decided to quit manufacturing them.

And although - like VHS tapes - floppies ended up being dirt cheap, they were rather expensive when first released!

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Heh, we all sound like such a bunch of old farts. :D