So farewell then, floppies?

[ffutures]

ps238principal points out that Sony are going to stop manufacturing 3.5" floppies in Japan next year - since they have 70% of the Japanese market and don't export them any more that may mean the end for this type of data storage - it's just a lot more expensive to manufacture than a CD-R or DVD-R, and with capacity so limited and most new computers lacking the drives there's just no point in carrying on.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20003360-92.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Since I haven't used one in at least 2-3 years I'm not going to worry too much about it!

Comments

[elementalv.livejournal.com]

I think it's been even longer than that for me -- maybe five or seven years since I used a floppy. I'm a bit surprised they're still around.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

Yah, end of an era but I'm not going to lose sleep over it or miss them, any more than did 5 1/4" floppies. I transferred anything I still had on them to CD/DVD ages ago. The CD/DVDs are more reliable anyway (although I think a lot of people have an exaggerated idea of just how long they'll last!).

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

According to another piece on the Beeb there are still many people using them, "hundreds of thousands" sold in the UK each month. I haven't bought one for aeons (so it's not me).

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

I haven't used them much since 1998/1999, when my family got an iMac G3, without a floppy drive.

[uk-lemming.livejournal.com]

I use one occasionaly, mostly for updating the bios on servers etc.

Mind you, the floppy I use was created in 1989, and has DR-DOS 6.0 on...