Re: Who still uses floppies these days?

["Bible John" <johnw_94020@yahoo.com>]

--
Luke 9:26-If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be 
ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and 
of the holy angels.
CERM-Church Education Resource Ministries
Founder and director
http://johnw.freeshell.org/bible
"Richard Bonner" <ak621@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote in message 
news:e481sp$cv0$1@Kil-nws-1.UCIS.Dal.Ca...
> Bible John wrote:
>> Presently I work in a printing shop.  Every now and then a customer will
>> drop by a business card, letterhead, or whatever on a floppy disk.  This 
>> is
>> not often (CD and USB flash rule) but I most definately get more floppies
>> than zips. In the 3 months I've been working there I have received 
>> probably
>> no more than 10 floppies, and not a single Zip disk.
>
> ***   I'd give a floppy too because the file is small and I don't mind
> giving out a 50-cent floppy as compared to a USB memory stick.  (-:

Agreed

>
>
>> Then I am wondering who is still using floppies these days?  I visit a
>> local retail store, and I've seen 10 large boxes of 100 floppies that 
>> just
>> sit on the shelf. They've been there for months and people are not buying
>> them.
>
> ***   I use them constantly. People aren't buying them because there are
> zillions of them around and people just recycle them. I get boxes of them
> from all my bloatware friends because they cannot fit stuff on floppy
> discs anymore. I just laugh at them and their folly. What's next? -
> Pentium 15s running at 1 terahertz just to type a letter?
>

Newer computers are overkill for what some use them for. But then again 
today many are using them for music,video,etc..

The SG machines of long ago seem to be dead.

>
>> On my old PC laptop I have no choice but to use floppies, since it cannot
>> use any USB flash drive.
>
> ***   That is why I bought a laptop with a floppy, CD-ROM, USB, and serial
> and parallel ports. I wasn't forced to upgrade all my hardware and then
> having to deal with brain-dead Windoze hardware and the lack of DOS
> drivers.

The laptop has all of that.  But the USB port cannot run anythign USB that 
requires the laptops power. So basicially I am stuck with floppies.

I did think about Bluetooth, but the cards are hard to find, and very very 
expensive.

>
>   I love walking into computer stores and having the salesperson try to
> sell me some useless Windoze product. "Does it run under DOS", I
> frequently ask. When he says "no", I laugh and say" "You should cater
> to all your actual customers instead only to the brainwashed public. Not
> everyone is sucked into using Windoze."

Richard I know of a network PCMCIA card that is on clearance in a retail 
store around my area that has DOS and Windows 3.x drivers. You want it?  It 
costs $29.00 + tax. I can provide you the phone number of the store.  I 
thought about you and the HP200LX DOS group when I saw the card.

Fortunately for me my PC laptop has a network card, as well as my Jornada 
720.  But if they lacked one, this card might be interesting.

>
>   They counter with "Oh, yeah, with DOS, how does one do...". I set up
> the laptop and proceed to give them a lesson in what a real operating
> system can do, and at a fraction of the CPU speed, to boot. I can't wait
> till I get a wireless Internet card for it.  (-:  (*)
>
>
>> So when I want a document to travel from my old
>> laptop, to ibook, and then to XP desktop, it must be on a floppy.  So for
>> that reason, I bought a USB drive for my ibook. Sure Wifi is cute, but 
>> then
>> again a hub would cost more than a floppy drive, and besides some people 
>> in
>> some locations do not have broadband Internet.  This is not my case, as 
>> I'd
>> rather not surf tthe Internet 24/7, which would be what would happen if I
>> installed a Wifi network.
>
> ***   All have their uses. I don't use floppies to transfer unless it
> can all fit on one floppy. If it's more than one, I usually use my USB
> flash drive. However, my DX4-100 does not have USB, so it's floppies all
> the way for it. Fortunately, I don't need to transfer many files to & from
> it that exceed 1.4 Mb.
>

Thats typicially the situation with my old Compaq laptop.  If I have larger 
files I borrow my Jornada's 1GB CF card.

At least it has a PCMCIA slot.  My first apple powerbook I bought used for 
$450 in 1998 lacked a PCMCIA port.  If I still had that mac I would have 
bought myself a loclatalk to ethernet adaptor, and these are very hard to 
find these days.

I saw one localtalk to ethernet adaptor selling for a lot of money once.

>
>> Here are the 10 reasons why floppies continue to rule!
>> 1. Writeable and Rewriteable in seconds.
>
>> 2. Highly compatible with millions of computers.
>
>> 3. With no hole in the center, they make better coasters.
>
>> 4. Very inexpensive.
>
>> 5. Available in lots of colors.
>
>> 6. Easy to label with custom information.
>
>> 7. Duplicated in seconds not weeks.
>
>> 8. Easy to recycle.
>
>> 9. Content is a manageable size.
>
>> 10. Great people like us still sell them!
>
> ***   You may add that security is easier because they can be bulk
> erased. CDs can't. I'd never use CDs for daily backups. For archiving,
> yes, but I want easily erasable discs for most purposes. My main complaint
> is the slow speed (300 RPM) and their unreliability over time.
>

I did use ORB disks or backup, but these days use a USB 80GB hard drive.

>
>> So are you guys buying from this company?  I mean if I had the need I 
>> would,
>> but the 50 pack of floppies I bought a year ago still seems to be going
>> strong.  I have about 10 disks remaining, so I may need to buy another 50
>> pack soon here. I like the colors.
>>
>> John
>
> ***   So do I, although, coloured labels could be used for CDs, and I can
> see someone coming out with coloured CDs, at least for the edge and label
> side.
>
>         Richard Bonner
> http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/
>
> (*) A friend of mine has a 486 laptop he bought for $5. $7 got him a
> witeless card. He runs MS-DOS 6.2 and in areas with good conections,
> he goes from bootup to "Google" screen in 16 seconds!
>
> R.
>


Richard would you mind posting screenshots of screen video clips of this?  I 
want to see this.



John



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