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thecreeper · 05-13-2005, 04:30 PM

Ah, the floppy disk, bastion of my existence. The worthless, overpriced, easily forgotten piece of plastic that many professors still insist on receiving with projects. Why is it that in the year 2005 this unreliable storage device has not been completely replaced?

I will say that the advent of cheap flash memory (in the form of Jump Drives) has made a sizable impact on use of the floppy disks. Whereas 10 years ago up until the last year or so, the floppy had been so important in a school and work setting, it is slowly being killed by compact discs and flash memory. I just wonder why this wasn't replaced earlier. The current floppy as we know it today holds 1.44MB and is 3.5 inches, and it was introduced nearly 20 years ago. Though the floppy has been around for ages in varying sizes and capacities, it is now being offered as optional equipment on most new computers, in addition to their capactity being rather worthless.

The capacity was bad enough, but it's matched by their unreliability. Floppies more than any other storage medium are known to go bad or lose information the easiest. Obviously, every medium has their disadvantages, but most have at least decent reliability. However, the floppy's exposure to dust, moisture, or heat can corrupt or destroy data in a file. And yet, this has been the primary source of sharing information in a school/work environment for me for the past 10-12 years. The price has often come back to be the dominating factor as to why these were chosen and are still used, but honestly, a CD or small USB flash drive is more reliable and much larger in capacity.

Hopefully in the next few years these ancient storage devices will be a thing of the past and projects will not be docked points or cause embarassing presentation problems because "floppy would not read." Go get a jump drive or turn in CD's with projects instead, it is safer and more professional anyway.

05-13-2005, 04:30 PM	#1
thecreeper Administrator Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Lancaster, PA Posts: 2,330	The Slow Painful Death of the Floppy Ah, the floppy disk, bastion of my existence. The worthless, overpriced, easily forgotten piece of plastic that many professors still insist on receiving with projects. Why is it that in the year 2005 this unreliable storage device has not been completely replaced? I will say that the advent of cheap flash memory (in the form of Jump Drives) has made a sizable impact on use of the floppy disks. Whereas 10 years ago up until the last year or so, the floppy had been so important in a school and work setting, it is slowly being killed by compact discs and flash memory. I just wonder why this wasn't replaced earlier. The current floppy as we know it today holds 1.44MB and is 3.5 inches, and it was introduced nearly 20 years ago. Though the floppy has been around for ages in varying sizes and capacities, it is now being offered as optional equipment on most new computers, in addition to their capactity being rather worthless. The capacity was bad enough, but it's matched by their unreliability. Floppies more than any other storage medium are known to go bad or lose information the easiest. Obviously, every medium has their disadvantages, but most have at least decent reliability. However, the floppy's exposure to dust, moisture, or heat can corrupt or destroy data in a file. And yet, this has been the primary source of sharing information in a school/work environment for me for the past 10-12 years. The price has often come back to be the dominating factor as to why these were chosen and are still used, but honestly, a CD or small USB flash drive is more reliable and much larger in capacity. Hopefully in the next few years these ancient storage devices will be a thing of the past and projects will not be docked points or cause embarassing presentation problems because "floppy would not read." Go get a jump drive or turn in CD's with projects instead, it is safer and more professional anyway.