View Poll Results: When 3.5" Floppy will be replaced

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  • 2005 or earlier

    16 31.37%
  • 2006

    2 3.92%
  • 2007

    5 9.80%
  • 2008

    6 11.76%
  • 2009

    0 0%
  • 2010

    6 11.76%
  • 2011

    0 0%
  • 2012

    0 0%
  • 2013

    0 0%
  • 2014 or later

    16 31.37%
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Thread: When 3.5" Floppy will be replaced

  1. #61
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    I have nottin agains floppys guys, i used the bootdisc eextensivley back in my win98 days. But what im saying is that bootable CD's offer a viable and more reliable (as they corrupt and develop errors less easily than floppys -- which seem to do it every 10 mins ). However now i use 2k rather than download win98 bootdisks, i use the bootable features of the win98 CD to get me to A prompt, and to be fair it beats the **** outta using floppys any day

    The argument that some users may not have bootable CD's is becoming more and more invalid by the day as all OS's from and including win 98 (at leats SE anyways), are on bootable CD's. It would appear to me that in a few years time the only people without the ability to boot from CD will be running either archaic operating systems, or hardware - or even both.

    Fear not the FDD still has many years left in it, but as CDR/W's and the like become more and more flexible and cheaper for the everyday user, floppys will slowly but surely die out im afraid

    --Jakk

  2. #62
    Gone Fishin' ukulele's Avatar
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    I think that in order to understand the necessity of the floppy drive, what you need to understand is that any cpu, that is based on the x86 architecture (and that includes ALL Intel compatable CPUs and chipsets and yes even the latest P4 and XPs, amoung others), ultimately reley on a simple DOS instruction set that will fit on a floppy disk, and that is a universal property in any bios ever made for PCs. This dictates that any bios will by design give up all priority to a floppy drive on boot up. Need I say more?

  3. #63
    Extreme Member! BipolarBill's Avatar
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    I don't see any reason to retire the floppy. The drives and media are cheap and readily available. It just plain works. The alternatives are:

    1. LS Superdrive - dead in the water and expensive.

    2. Zip drive - expensive

    3. USB "finger drives" - expensive, glitchy and systems are not ready for them.

    Of the three, USB finger drives offer the most promise. They are expensive, but are quickly and easily rewritable.

    The biggest problem with floppies is the state of quality in the disks - it's awful. Floppies don't seem to last more than a few uses these days. I don't bother reusing them anymore - I just reach for a new one, use it and throw it away. I have Microsoft Plus! on floppy from 1996 and the disks are still usable!
    MS MCP, MCSE

  4. #64
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    The point is that in the next 5 years all new computers will be cd bootable cdrws will be 60x and cost $20 along with discs costing 10 cents a piece and operating systems taking up more than 3 gigs of spcae. In this kind of world who would ever need a floppy. what if they put dos right in your bios. And as far as haviing a bad ide channel is concerned i dont think to many people are going to go through the trouble of learning dos and then trying 10 times to boot from a piece of **** floppy and finally learning that they could have just sent there computer or motherboard in in the first place and get a brand new one. And as far as the imac argument it failed because it all around sucked no power, look horrific, had an older OS and costed way to much. I baught a pack of floppies 6 years ago it was a 12 pack got it for $5 to this day i have used only one floppy and that was for a boot disk which i first used 3 weeks ago and to my amasment the disk was corrupted from sitting around all this time. I then made another and found that when i went to pull it out the metal slide thing on top of the disk got caught in the drive on my lappy. So as you can see the floppy has no place in the future it is just old farts who still runn 486s. I mean come on people imagine the year is 2015 and i get in my new hover car and load my personal settings up withthe microchip implanted in my finger tip. But when i get to the office to my supprise my 20ghz PC with a 4tb harddrive and 60 gigs of ramwont start because my version of windows XXXXXX wont start and i have to reformatt. A do i pull out my floppy that ive had for 20years or do i B insert my super CD into the drive whic contains a complete copy of windows and every diagnostic i could ever need. or C does my computer just not fail. I mean think about the floppy disk doesnt exacly go along with a trip to mars or a galactic cruise.

  5. #65
    Ultimate Member morpheus kain's Avatar
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    Yes, the quality of floppies is abominable. I think that with built in support from the motherboard, Firewire keychain drives (yes firewire, I hate USB) could be the wave of the future.
    -"Don't touch that!!!!!" -ZAPPPPP!- Hehe yet another excuse to upgrade-

  6. #66
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    ...and besides - i have a terrible knack of misplacing floppies



    But seriously, with technology advancing at the tremendous rate it is, the days of the FDD are numbered

    --Jakk

  7. #67
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    Originally posted by morpheus kain
    Yes, the quality of floppies is abominable. I think that with built in support from the motherboard, Firewire keychain drives (yes firewire, I hate USB) could be the wave of the future.
    Count another Vote to FireWire bootable devices


  8. #68
    Senior Member racronus's Avatar
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    Originally posted by joerg
    I mean come on people imagine the year is 2015 and i get in my new hover car and load my personal settings up withthe microchip implanted in my finger tip. But when i get to the office to my supprise my 20ghz PC with a 4tb harddrive and 60 gigs of ramwont start because my version of windows XXXXXX wont start and i have to reformatt. A do i pull out my floppy that ive had for 20years or do i B insert my super CD into the drive whic contains a complete copy of windows and every diagnostic i could ever need. or C does my computer just not fail. I mean think about the floppy disk doesnt exacly go along with a trip to mars or a galactic cruise.
    I agree with joerg, many are not thinking ahead.

    I don't think floppies being "cheap" is really a reason. When talking about computers something state of the art 2-3 years ago can barely sale for much nowadays. So several years from now, don't expect cds, usb, and many of the current new and expensive devices to still cost as much as they do today.

  9. #69
    Guest leprechaun_40's Avatar
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    LONG LIVE DOS! OK,, gimme a MOBO that can boot from a fire wire keychain, and I'll toss my floppys out the window. Until then,, I'm keeping them

    I haven't bought a floppy in years, for several years, AOL kept sending them to me Yup, you got it,, I just formated them and put em in the box

    Sure, sometimes they go bad, but hey, for free?? I just toss it and pop in another one I also have a bunch from other sources who were sending them with something, so I'll prolly never buy another one again

  10. #70
    Member mpc2's Avatar
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    Originally posted by ukulele
    Imac's didn't have one and they were about as popular as Eskimo Pies in Nome, Alaska.
    It was the most succesful computer model of all time!

  11. #71
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    I lost my floppy when I got mad and kicked my computer and broke the flopppy drive well over 1.5 years ago. I never think about it, never feel a need to have it and have trust in my firewalls and regularly updated virus program.

    I'll buy one with my next computer (only becaus ethey are like $5) but I wish they'd die. I'm sure within the next 5 years they'll be bye bye.

    First it was 5 1/4" disks, and floppy wiped those out.

    Next its floppy, and cd will wipe them out,

    Of course next is dvd which will eventually replace cd as the next technology comes out.

    Its all a cycle. Of course people who just use text files will still use floppies in future years but I wont think they will be a necessity anymore.
    Visionology Interactive Media
    http://www.visim.com

  12. #72
    Member mpc2's Avatar
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    Originally posted by joerg
    The point is that in the next 5 years all new computers will be cd bootable cdrws will be 60x and cost $20 along with discs costing 10 cents a piece and operating systems taking up more than 3 gigs of spcae. In this kind of world who would ever need a floppy.
    The bigger point is that in the next five years computers won't be "booting" at all, due to technologies such as MRAM and other types of nonvolatile memory.

    Do all you floppy jockies think they are going to continue to build PC's the same way forever?

  13. #73
    Ultimate Member morpheus kain's Avatar
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    Hey, if you wanted something really nice produce a form of non-volatile memory that has the basic procedures for the OS loaded on it. Then you won't need a boot disk if the worst arises.
    -"Don't touch that!!!!!" -ZAPPPPP!- Hehe yet another excuse to upgrade-

  14. #74
    Guest leprechaun_40's Avatar
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    Floppy junkies uh huh,, I mainline the chrome oxide

    Still, as a cheap, portable media, they are unbeatable.

    I like the idea of the system that doesn't need to be booted, great idea, I'll throw my floppys away(after I lick off the media ) that day. Until then, I need a way to fix the systems that are in use, and that means the floppy

  15. #75
    Gone Fishin' ukulele's Avatar
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    First it was 5 1/4" disks, and floppy wiped those out.
    Actually 5 1/4" diskettes were true floppys. The 3 1/2" diskettes were not. The term floppy was a carry over. There were in fact 8 1/2 " floppys before them. I still have an origional IBM 8 1/2" floppy storage box. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

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