>Just an editorial comment: If floppies were not reliable, they wouldn't >have been around so long. > >-John
Actually, it's more like....Well, this is what computers have had for a long time (read: It's a Standard). So, we'll keep making them. Seriously...Compare the computer at your desk to the one you may have had back 10 years ago. Aside from the case, power supply, and general layout of the PC, what's the same? Just your floppy drive. I personally find floppy drives to be an annoying dinosaur that won't die. It's an extremely old technology. One that has changed very little over time since it was invented. The Apple II's I used in High School in the late '80s had 3.5" drives (They were only 800K, but they were still 3.5" drives). The other standard that won't die is the keyboard. I've been told (now maybe this is only an urban legend...) that IBM purposely invented the QWERTY keyboard to slow down typists. Seems they were having problems with the typewriters jamming because people typed too fast. If a Dvorak keyboard is faster and more efficient, why don't we use it? QWERTY is standard, that's why... Just like the 3.5" Floppy. IBM tried 2.88MB 3.5"... We have ZIP, LS-120, Click! Disks, and a host of more efficient, logically larger, physically smaller devices (IBM just made a working 1GB hard drive the size of a compact flash card) and we still use these stupid squares that hold less than 1.5MB (Well, 1.6MB or so if you use certain utilities...). C'mon, seriously, just to show how too small a floppy is, have you ever had to install Microsoft Office 4.2c from 3.5's? It's over TWENTY floppies. MacOS 7.5 on 1.44 MB floppies is a nightmare. Hell, the box it comes in is heavy thanks to all the disks.... Floppies are not reliable. I've had too many of the things go bad after written to once or twice. How about the stupid metal sheilds? Seriously, show of hands... How many of you have had to rip the shield off to keep using a disk? Thank goodness Maxell did something about that... ALthought it took OVER TEN YEARS for the plastic shield to come to the market! (Seriously, I ONLY buy Maxell now. Those plastic shields are very nice.) Christopher
