[Leonis]

I am just wondering.....



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My comic web site

I don't use spell checker.

[yoyo52]

Sometimes students will come to me with a floppy (usually a Windows one, by the way, which for some reason they can't open on the Wintels in the computer labs). I've got a B&W G3 in my office, so no luck with the floppy--but a colleage next door has a beige G3, and it has a floppy, so I go over there, transfer the file from floppy to zip, and bring it back to my office. I then tell the student to grow up and buy a flowerpower iMac

I haven't used a floppy in years, except when I added a new HD to a Wintel PC. However, I think many people still do. I work in a Computer Retail store, and 9 times out of 10 when a customer buys a Mac they shell out another $78 to buy a VST floppy drive. I think that most people still have a use for floppys, and I know that if my Mac had one, I would use it to back up papers I am working on. I don't have a ZIP.

Email between home and campus can get flaky, so I transfer files on floppy. Still, that only means I use a floppy about 4 times a week or so. But I could currently go without a floppy again if I really needed to.

[brown monk]

What's a floppy?

[Cipher13]

Nope. They're crap. 1.38 megs? Come on... what a waste.
I have a computer on my network with a floppy drive (5500), so when I need to copy something to floppy, I just drop it on the 5500 HD and then copy it over. Easy. Just like having a floppy drive.
Or I can mount the disk directly...
I hate floppy disks. Wintel users just don't get it that they're dead.
I hate having to use them cause people still think they're viable.
Ah well, this coming form someone who has an 8" floppy disk in his desk that holds an ENORMOUS 128 BYTES.
Yep, bytes.
Thats not as cool as the old hard drive though - its around 3 feet wide, cylindrical, 1 and a half feet tall, weighs a friggin' ton, and holds - 800 K
Hehehe.
Just a little nostalgia...

Oh dear... I just remembered I have a box full of floppies, tied together through the lock slots, with data backed up from ages ago... oh man I hated backing stuff up. Now just drag to Toast, and I'm done
I suppose I'll have to go through all that... oh boy. Thats a hell of a job

Cipher13

[This message has been edited by Cipher13 (edited 02-24-2001).]

[Milio]

Yep. A USB floppy is a needed accessory for me. I get a lot of files from clients on floppy disks. And when you think of it, they're an excellent choice. Durable, cheap and just the right size for several Word files and a few gifs and jpegs.

Not everyone has a network connection.

[This message has been edited by Milio (edited 02-24-2001).]

for those people with sony mavicas that use floppies as fillm, they're still a viable medium

[Gulliver64]

Yes, because some programs come originally only on floppies (RAM-doubler, Speed-Doubler, MS-Project, etc.). If you have to reinstall them for whatever reason you need the original installer on the floppy and later apply the updaters from the internet.

Especially RAM-doubler cannot be copied between drives (unless with some hacks) and there is no full installer for users who originally bought version 2 and upgraded from there.

[sodamnregistered]

Often. But I'm in corporate presentations though. I see a lot of wierd stuff.

Used a floppy disk 8 times yesterday alone.

I used my 9500 to put some windows drivers on a PC floppy just last week. Macs reading/writing PC stuff is incredibly useful. I wish my Pismo 500 had a floppy- sometimes.

Floppies blow, but they still exist.

I just built a new W2k Athlon 1.1GHz last week. I did not put a floppy or zip in it. It has a network card and dual-head matrox G450 video card. Kinda Maclike, two monitors and built-in networking. Unmaclike was the killer price/performance ratio: $1100 with 45GB 7200rpm ATA100 IBM HD, 512MB Corsair PC133 ram, Matrox Dual Head 32MB DDR video. It's fast as all hell and I've written some incredible QT files and MPEG-2 encodes with it already! But, I digress...

[This message has been edited by sodamnregistered (edited 02-24-2001).]

[This message has been edited by sodamnregistered (edited 02-24-2001).]

[2far]

Haven't used floppies in years, but just recently had to install a windoze app on Virtual PC that had the license code on a floppy, and even wanted to access a physical drive (the image I first made did not work). I won't forget that for a while ... (found out that with VPC4 the app could be convinced the image was a physical drive, but had VPC3 at the time, and app wouldn't work with VPC4 anyway, mysteriously).

And for the real windoze boxes: most of them still can't boot off CDs, so they need floppies to re-install Windows(TM) or whatever once a month. Also when you install a new HD you have to boot off the floppy, partition, format and install MS-DOS on the HD, install a CD driver and then proceed to install Windows(TM). Takes about one and a half hour if your very fast. And about 15 reboots in-between.

Sometime back I made a week-long project of backing up all my old floppies (installers and such) to CD as image files. Threw away about 300 floppies. I often forget that I still have a floppy drive.

[2far]

I forgot to mention that my last floppy drive has gone a few weeks ago when I sold my PowerBook 2400 ... I work with Macs professionally, and as you might have guessed, pros don't use/need floppies

Also no Zip, no MO-disks, no Superdisk, etc. Removable media is dead for me (excluding CDs). Either something is so large that I burn a CD (or even fill a firewire HD), or it can be transferred thru the net.

[This message has been edited by 2far (edited 02-24-2001).]

[Fred CHOTTIN]

i have a SuperDisk with my iMac and i haven't used floppies for over a year now. It was to send a file to a PC user. Too bad now, you can't format these old things in PC format with OS 9.1.

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Fight against the Dark Force (Microsoft)

[billybob]

Originally posted by Cipher13:

I hate floppy disks. Wintel users just don't get it that they're dead.

Ummm... I dont know many wintel users that actually use floppies for anything other than installing (or reinstalling) windows or linux. I agree that floppeis suck ass, and i havent missed them in the 2 years that ive had an imac , but they're absolutely necessary if you own a PC (which I do as well). Otherwise, something goes wrong... you're f~cked.

Even BEFORE I had an imac... i dont think i've used an actual floppy in atleast 5 years. Internet and zip drives took care of that for me.

[Dr Evil]

Since I got my B&W, I havent used a floppy in almost 2 years. My sister has a Beige I needed it, but i have a USB zip drive that i rarely use. I have a network setup with an airport hub and ftp space from my school, so i dont have a need for a floppy. Also the trusty 4x Panasonic burner comes in handy too.

[WDL]

Occasionally.

Still have some old apps that came on floppies and my original LaserWriterSelect 360
software on floppies. The old Printer Utility still works on the recent OS's and contains
features not found in the current PU.

A month ago had to get a patch for a $150 program - the maker sent it on floppy.

Also, I don't like cluttering up Zip disks with little items - prefer keeping them on floppies -
like physical post-it notes - because I don't like cluttering up my HD either.

Still serve a limited purpose for me.

WDL

[Dr Evil]

If you need the floppies, why not make Shrinkwrap/Diskcopy images of them and put them on cd or what have you? that is what i did with my old joystick software and games.

[3gg3]

Use floppies? Yes, but not as often as I'd liked, since the SuperDisk I had to buy won't handle the DD disks this Old Fart has so much stuff on.
Damn!

[DocWest]

Damn I hate floppies. They suck so much.
Capacity too small and they are too friggin slow.

Since the only computers at home are iMacs, haven't used them for a year.
Although when my mum bought her iMac, the dude talked her into buying a SuperDisk so she could read all her old floppies. Stupid Stupid Stupid! The floppies were 400k ones and the superdisk couldn't read them. grrrrr. (I wish my mum was that gullible with me!)

Anyway, If a peecee dork gave me a file on floppy I could read it. But i'd chew them out for still using floppies.
If a software company gave me something on a floppy I would abuse them.
Put it on a cd or put it on the internet.

[Fyre4ce]

Nope. I guess Steve "hit the nail on the head" with the floppy-less iMac (sorry for being trite). I still have floppy capabilities though - the Performa in the basement has a drive, if I ever need it.

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Fyre4ce

"I need a vacation." - Terminator robot

[Allah]

As I'm fond of saying "I can crap bugger than 1.4 mb!". So no I don't use floppies. Got my G! and never looked back.

[Cake]

Yeah occasionally. I work in Post-Production so every now and then a client comes in with an EDL on a floppy, but other than that ZIP's have definitely replaced floppies as the smallest standard available.

[vega24]

With blank CD-R media so cheap, under $1 a piece, and CD burners everywhere there is simply no need for floppies. The floppy drive should have went the way of the dinosaurs a long time ago. Apples new iMac's and G4 towers that have CD-RW drives built right in only strengthens this idea.

[Scotttheking]

I use 10 floppies per year.
I have a disk based subscription to something, and they send it on disks.
All I do is look down at my PM6100 on the floor.
My linux machine AMD K6 has a floppy, never used it.

I use em at work to give my boss his files he needs to take home, that is all.
I just told him that when he needed to give me something, save it as a certain file on his hard drive, and I just check it for that file and network copy it over

[madcow]

In my SE/30 and Mac original. I haven't used a disk drive in either my BeigeG3 or my newer G4.

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Moo

[Misha]

Haven't used them in years. In fact, I've took the floppy drive out of the one Mac that I had left that had one (a PowerCenter) and used the new internal space for a hard drive.

I agree that if you own a PC it's a necessary evil. I don't see them ever ridding themselves of that drive, either.

[chris v]

I own a printing company, and people come through my door with all sorts of garbage. I mostly use my floppy drive to show them exactly why their logo, saved from their web page as a 1" x 1" GIF won't print at 12" x 12" at 85 line screen. It's amazing what the wintel people think you can do with a floppy. "Here's my art--it's a .doc file on a floppy. Can you print it tomorrow?"

AARRGGHH!!!

I move more stuff around by ftp and email these days.

There's a box in the corner of the art room with about 600 floppies in it. I offer them for free to anyone who will listen, but haven't had any takers in over a year.

CV

[iSilver]

Hi the nail on the head that last comment. I am ditching my Desktop 233 with a floppy soon when the new G4 arrives, if anyone gives me a floppy I think I'll give it back and tell'em to email it to me. Or maybe i should pinch one of the Teac USB drives from work, they're pretty crappy - but graphite colured!!!

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Misha:
I agree that if you own a PC it's a necessary evil. I don't see them ever ridding themselves of that drive, either.

Hehehe, aint that the truth... until they totally redesign the "PC", from the ground up, they're stuck with it.

Cipher13

[RevEvs]

Since buying my G4 (original config) I've needed to use a floppy less then 10/15 times I think. Mostly to transfer work when I could not use email. I have an old 68k Performa networked to my G4 so transfering to floppy isent much trouble. But I hardly have much work that fits on a floppy anymore...

[idjeff]

A what?

[skop]

We still get them occasionally with jobs on them, so we have one Imation Superdisk to read them.

One caution, never stick an 800K floppy in a Superdrive, you gotta pry the stinkin' thing out.

[d2kit]

I haven't used a floppy from February 1998 when I got my B&W G3, but actually when I had the Beige 266 I never used them either or very very rarely. Going with email for everything when zip can be avoided (exept big files for other users who have 56k modems), zips all the way for fast moving around, cdr for backup and multimedia files,

[Norm1985]

Not anymore for me. I use CD-Rs/RWs to transfer/exchange large files and for files less than 30 megs I use e-mail or iDisks. I'm able to do this because both the place I work at and my home have some form broadband.

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Mac OS for productivity.
UNIX for stability.
Palm OS for mobility.
Windows for solitaire.

[jlb]

Never. I'm even ashamed to say that I bought a VST floppy drive a few months ago and have not used it once. I don't even know if it works! Oh well.

My place of employment (80+ Macs) had to purchase five VST floppy drives because clients kept sending advertising materials on them. Now we're seeing more and more Zip disks though. A few burned CDs once and a while too.

I have a friend who says she would NEVER buy a Mac because she couldn't live without her floppy drive. I roll my eyes whenever she says this, but I don't hold it against her... despite how useless floppies really are in the age of CD-Rs and Internet file storage/transfer. I guess there's something to be said in the notion that you don't really need a CD-R for a half-dozen Word files either.

-jlb

[malson]

I have used my floppy drive exactly once in the last 3 years or so. It actually happened about 3 weeks ago. I had to take a graphic image to a printer so they could cut the silkscreens. The print shop didn't have email on any of their machines. Crazy! The image was small, under 500k. Not a big deal but the real pain of it was digging through all of my old stuff to try and find a stupid floppy!

[Ruddigger]

Not since I got my G4 almost a year ago.

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-Ruddigger
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Have you had your
gigaflop today?

[MacFan]

Haven't used floppies since mid '94 at least. Moved to zips then CD-R when it became resonable price wise and have not looked back.

[Allah]

PCs will never be able to "evolve" as the Mac has done. There are so many manufacturers making the same old thing.
If a manufacturer decided to make a "modern" PC then they would have to fear no-one would want "their" PC.

PCs still have parallel ports and beep, right?