06-02-2003 01:16									#1
	Death to the Floppy! Hurrah! Inflate your Upload Space

Intel said they'd try to kill off the floppy in new computers in 2003, and it looks like Dell agrees.

No more floppies on Dell Dimension PCs starting in a couple months.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/030205/tech_1.html

The first Mac user to mention what I know they're going to mention gets a preemptive smack upside the head.

	06-02-2003 01:18									#2
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Thanks for the preemptive smack, *******.

	06-02-2003 01:23									#3
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* Ari Rahikkala is not a Mac user *

Macintoshes haven't had floppy drives for a long time .

There .

Last edited by Ari Rahikkala on 06-02-2003 at 01:35

	06-02-2003 01:25									#4
	Tired of ads?

It's a lot easier to be heavy handed when you're the only supplier in town.

	06-02-2003 01:27									#5
	Inflate your Upload Space

But Macs stopped having floppy drives when they were still useful. Now, with the increased proliferation of CD recording, they are really outdated and need to be phased out.

Mac's move was inconvenient, Dell's is rightly-timed.

	06-02-2003 01:31									#6
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Do they have re-recordable CD's?
* DinoDoc shows how non-tech savvy he is

	06-02-2003 01:39									#7
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I don't understand this. How much do floppy drives cost? 5$? 15$?

The inconvenience of a user having to deal with a single problem this will cause is enough to make this move a bad idea.

	06-02-2003 01:41									#8
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For the record, I have a CD-RW drive, and yet I've used floppies a dozen times in the past month.

	06-02-2003 01:42									#9
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Mainly for transferring Excel/Word documents from one machine to another. Floppies are admittedly useless for archiving purposes...

	06-02-2003 01:54									#10
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I must confess I absolutely detest floppy disks ever since I can remember...you can hardly fit anything on them, they invariably go wrong amd fill with errors...good riddance, I would certainly dance on their grave

	06-02-2003 01:54									#11
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Why oh why would you use a floppy? Not only are they slow and limited on storage, but they're larger than USB storage devices and are FAR more likely to corrupt/lose data.

Dino: Yes, CD-RWs have existed for many years now.

	06-02-2003 01:56									#12
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Frogger: For transferring files between computers, there's a nice little thing called the internet.

Of course not all computers are on the internet, in which case a CD-RW or a USB storage device would be used.

	06-02-2003 01:59									#13
	Increase Your PM Length

Asher: You got a 56k MS Word document that you need to take from the office to work at home so you can get it ready for the presentation tomorrow. You can't email it because your idiot IT guy just loves firewalls, and any outgoing email with attachments gets thrown out*. Who-hoo, Dell and Intel just f*cked ya. Hope you enjoyed it!

Now do you see why?

*Typically, offices like the above aren't too thrilled with the idea of giving employees CD-burners. And they sure as hell ain't going to give you nice, little, easy-to-steal USB periphrials (sp?), nor will they allow you to hook yours up.

Last edited by JohnT on 06-02-2003 at 02:04

	06-02-2003 01:59									#14
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a) It's faster to write to a floppy than it is to email myself
b) Floppy drives are in the front of my computer, USB ports are in the back
c) For shared-access computers, it is often difficult to get permission to install programs like the driver for a USB device (they do require a driver, right?)
d) If I lose a floppy I'm out .30$ If I lose a USB storage thingy I'm out 30$

	06-02-2003 02:01									#15
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quote: Originally posted by JohnT Asher: You got a 56k MS Word document that you need to take from the office to work at home so you can get it ready for the presentation tomorrow. You can't email it because your idiot IT guy just loves firewalls, and any outgoing email with attachments gets thrown out*. Who-hoo, Dell and Intel just f*cked ya. Hope you enjoyed it! Now do you see why?

Um. No, I don't.
I have a very hard time believing your work computers don't have a USB slot or a CD-ROM drive.

	06-02-2003 02:04									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Frogger a) It's faster to write to a floppy than it is to email myself

How about burning it to a CD-RW?

quote: b) Floppy drives are in the front of my computer, USB ports are in the back

Newer computers come with them at the front, for this reason. They're playing up the ability to hot swap lots of USB things, and it's a pain when they're at the back.

quote: c) For shared-access computers, it is often difficult to get permission to install programs like the driver for a USB device (they do require a driver, right?)

USB Storage drivers are a standard and included in Windows XP and installable on other versions. If you're taking them to old, legacy computers, other media like CD-ROMs are a better bet.

quote: d) If I lose a floppy I'm out .30$ If I lose a USB storage thingy I'm out 30$

How much if you lose a CD?

	06-02-2003 02:06									#17
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quote: Originally posted by Frogger b) Floppy drives are in the front of my computer, USB ports are in the back

My USB ports are in the front. I assume that any PC's without floppy drives would also have them at the front.

Having said that, I agree with you. Floppy's should stay.

	06-02-2003 02:07									#18
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You can still buy a floppy drive if you're going to be anal and install it in a drivebay.

It's time to start shoving people away from floppies onto new standards, which is what this move does.

	06-02-2003 02:08									#19
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quote: Originally posted by Asher Um. No, I don't. I have a very hard time believing your work computers don't have a USB slot or a CD-ROM drive.

CD-burner, Asher. And, of course, I didn't say that the computer wouldn't have a USB slot, just that you'll get in the ****-house for installing your periphrials (sp, again!) to it.

Oh, and in matters of fact, belief is not required. So, do yourself a favor and let go of these erroneous beliefs and start dealing with computers the way they're actually used in the workplace.

	06-02-2003 02:08									#20
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by Asher I have a very hard time believing your work computers don't have a USB slot or a CD-ROM drive.

1) CD-ROM drives are different from CD-R drives.
2) See Frogger's post on the relative value of USB external drives vs floppy disks.

	06-02-2003 02:09									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Asher How about burning it to a CD-RW?

It's overkill, for one thing.

Plus, unless you have some of that software (I forget what it's called) that allows you to write to CDs as if they were any other form of media, you need a program like Nero to burn a file to a CD. Which is a lot of hassle when you could bung the thing on a floppy in a few seconds.

	06-02-2003 02:09									#22
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Dino:

1. You only need a CD-burner to read CD-RW discs. You can read CD-R files perfectly fine on most CD-ROMs.
2. If you're worried about value, use a CD...

If you work for whatever reason refuses to allow you to email files home, and refuses to allow you to FTP them home, and doesn't have a CD burner, and doesn't allow USB storage -- and they only have a floppy, perhaps it's time you tell them to upgrade?

I think that's quite a rare situation. And since mainstream PCs are ditching floppies, the company would find a way to let you move files.

	06-02-2003 02:10									#23
	Put an end to popups!

quote: It's time to start shoving people away from floppies onto new standards, which is what this move does.

It's always a good idea to copy Apple.

Welcome to five years ago!

	06-02-2003 02:11									#24
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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.

	06-02-2003 02:15									#25
	Increase the size of your Attachments

The first time I even saw a Windows XP screen was a week ago.

	06-02-2003 02:16									#26
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quote: 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.

Your school computers surely have internet access?

My school gives out FTP and email accounts to every student for free, and they're all available on all computers...

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

Uhh...
No.

Have you used a format that treats the CD drive like a floppy? It takes a while to start to burn regular data CDs, but when it's a formatted disc it's much faster than a floppy.

quote: 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.

Is Quebec in a timewarp?
If you're constantly around old computers like that, go ahead and buy a $20 floppy drive. You can still do that, you know.

The move to not installing them by default is intended to get people AWAY from the mentality that floppy drives are the only way to reliably transfer files. There are so many better ways.

	06-02-2003 02:16									#27
	Increase Your PM Length

"If you work for whatever reason refuses to allow you to email files home, and refuses to allow you to FTP them home, and doesn't have a CD burner, and doesn't allow USB storage -- and they only have a floppy, perhaps it's time you tell them to upgrade?"



Heh-heh. You really don't work for a living, do you? "Tell them to upgrade." That's pretty good.

... walks away chuckling...

	06-02-2003 02:19									#28
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Asher, what about transferring files from work/school to the house?

Like we've said, online transfers are not always possible, CD-RW drives are rare in offices/schools, USB devices require programs to be installed, which requires administrative privileges.

You're left with floppies as the media of choice.

CD-burning is most certainly overkill, and it takes 1-2 minutes just to set up a disk for burning (needs to be formatted for drag-n-drop recording on my computer, then needs to be formatted to be read on any computer which takes up 20 MB)

	06-02-2003 02:19									#29
	Remove this text

quote: Originally posted by JohnT Heh-heh. You really don't work for a living, do you? "Tell them to upgrade." That's pretty good. ... walks away chuckling...

Umm....Well John, let me put it this way.

If your company refuses to give you any option but use a floppy drive to take work to and from home, and mainstream PCs no longer come with a floppy drive, they'd better do something.

Or you could even spend $20 on your own floppy drive, you know.

It's a VERY good thing to stop shipping floppy drives with computers. It's a piece of ****, slow, antiquated standard and people need to move on. You can still buy them if you want.

It's not a big deal.

People can go cry elsewhere about it.

	06-02-2003 02:21									#30
	Put an end to popups!

To give an example of why Dell's move is premature (not unnecessary, but premature) is this: I have two computers here at uni: my desktop PC and my laptop. Neither are state of the art; although my desktop PC has a CD-writer, it's still a P166. My laptop is a 486, and has no CD-ROM and only a 200 meg hard disk. I use it to type stuff up when I'm in the library, and to transfer the files to my other computer (to print, for example), I have no choice but to use a floppy.

I have no choice in this. I can't afford a new computer of any kind on student money, so I have to make do.

Like I say, Dell's move is ultimately necessary, but a little premature.