Posted by axxxr
PC World is killing off the floppy disk by announcing that it won't stock any more of them once the existing stock has sold out.
Some quick facts:
2 billion floppy disks were sold globally in 1988, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan.
By 2006, this had fallen to 700 million units.
Today, 98% of all PCs in PC World have no floppy, or ‘A’ drive. It will be 100% by this summer.
Floppy Milestones
* In 1971, IBM introduced the first floppy disk. The first floppy was an 8 inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide. The nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility. The floppy disk was revolutionary device in its time due to its portability and the ease with which data could be transferred from computer to computer. The original floppy disk, invented by Alan Shugart, held 100 KBs of data.
* In 1976, the 5 ¼ inch flexible disk drive and diskette was developed by Alan Shugart for Wang Laboratories. Wang had wanted a smaller floppy disk and drive to use with their desktop computers. By 1978, more than 10 manufacturers were producing 5 1/4" floppy drives.
* In 1981, Sony introduced the first 3 1/2" floppy drives and disks, the standard used to this day.
* In some countries, including South Africa, 3½-inch floppy disks are commonly called stiffies or stiffy disks, because of their "stiff" (rigid) cases. In Finnish, the term is korppu (rusk, crumpet, biscuit).
* New Order's dance track "Blue Monday" was initially sold in a sleeve designed to resemble a 5¼-inch floppy disk. Fatboy Slim's 1995 album, Better Living Through Chemistry, features a 3½-inch floppy with the track names on its label.
source
Posted by joebmc
And i was only using one yesterday (took me about a hour to find one), needed to transfer one small file from one pc to another and my usb key broke.
Posted by axxxr
I've still got a whole pile of them on my desk now,my other PC still has a floppy drive so so they come in usefull from time to time.
Posted by raverockz
that is like kinda of an history now....must keep it safe...maybe when we old...its worths alot...hahas
Posted by gudgin
good riddance, I hated them, they always corrupted my work or gave me a BSOD.
Although it seems odd that there was a time I thought 1.44MB was a load of space (I'm only 20!)
Posted by brix25
Honestly I hated stiffies because they were unreliable when it came to heavy-duty usage. The last time I used a stiffy must have been five years ago and there was always the risk that my computer would crash because they were were corrupt.
Posted by p900 lover
Ya i read this in the Metro today, oh well its about time to be honest. I remeber using them for school in like year 7 and 8. Im only 18 too
and iv still got a few left
Posted by Xugaa
Lol, I remember storing things on just over 1mb...
Can't even store a song lol
Posted by djtwistter
lol they should be keep at a musem
Posted by masseur
having been in IT for more than 30 years (26 since leaving school where, to earn some pocket money, I did computer studies and part time work on trs-80 writing basic and assembler - remember peek and poke?
- for an accountant) I'm not sad to see these things go
my first experience was probably on an old DEC rt-11 machine and they were the old 8" jobbies that stored almost nothing but in those days of 32kb overlayed programs it was a heck of alot!
I can also remember installing early versions of microsoft office from something like 3 1/2" 15 floppies!
iomega tried to supercede the floppy with their jaz but instead they seem to just create an alternate and I'm guessing that too has died a death
for me though, the floopy probably died 5 years ago as I haven't had a pc for that long that supported the media
Posted by axxxr
I guess floppy disks can now join VHS.
Kind of Sad to see these formats come to end as they have done a lot for us over the years.
But as with all Technology something better will always be around the corner.
Posted by Gigs
Couldn't have happened to a nicer product lol
Ouch Massuer, 8" disks were the absolute devil, though they would have made great serving trays for smaller sized pizzas
Posted by masseur
actually they made pretty good frisbees across the office!
Posted by lamont
tut tut masseur youve just ruined my image of the mature boss
playing frisbee in the office! Does sound rather fun though.
last time i used a 3.5" was as a boot disc for a windows 95 pc! hehe those were the days!
Posted by rule_breaker
Have not used floppy disks since 2001, They were very unreliable... However I still feel Sad, Wonder why?