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i used one on wednesday (but it was for the first time in about a year). i was giving a presentation and so i put it on a floppy aswell as a cd just incase the uni computer didnt like the cd.i had to borrow my flat mates external floppy drive. it was s slow and uninteresting experience!
 
7on said:
I used one to make sure a floppy drive worked for a PC I'm selling.

I used them for school last term with a TA who claimed that when she accepted homework by e-mail too many people e-mailed her files she couldn't open, but the problem went away when she asked for HW on floppy disks? :confused:
 
Spring of 2002, upgrading the BIOS on a work PC laptop.

Seems like a decade or so since I've used one on a Mac!
 
Back in my day, we didn't have floppy disks. We had to store all our memory in our head. We would spend hours memorizing all kinds of data than pecking it out on what was called a typewriter. Then around 1980, they brought out what was called a Brothers word processor. You could put a floppy disk in it and story your data there, you see. That's the last time I used a floppy. :)
 
In high school, about 6 years back. Used to play 'Nags', and it was so small, we could sneak it in the floppy disk.:)

mkrishnan said:
I used them for school last term with a TA who claimed that when she accepted homework by e-mail too many people e-mailed her files she couldn't open, but the problem went away when she asked for HW on floppy disks? :confused:
:D , may be she couldn't open her email.
cool avatar dude :)

cheers
 
I used one last month, to place some files that had to be opened later on a PC. I could have used a CD, but I had just around 1MB of data to transfer, and floppies are just about as disposable as CDs anyway, relatively speaking. I probably have 20 or so blank floppies sitting around, and a little under 400 blank CDRs, but I'll likely run out of CDRs before I run out of those floppies.

The only reason I even have a USB floppy drive is I switched to Mac in January 2003, and it seems to me conventional wisdom was I'll need a floppy drive to ease the transition. Well after almost a year and a half, that turns out to be mostly untrue. A floppy drive is nice to have around once in a long, long while, but I might as well not own one.

Some useful, if only anecdotal information: writing on the floppy drive seemed way faster than before. On my old iBook it seemed to take forever. My new PowerBook handled it way faster. I guess USB 2.0 helps a lot.
 
I think I had to use one about three years ago when my boss gave me some files on floppy disk. I immediately transferred the files to my server space and threw the disk away.

Before that was probably six or seven years ago, installing an old copy of Quark. Remember, back when even the CD version of Quark came with a floppy that was required for installation? Some sort of arcane copy protection, I think.
 
last time I used a floppy was 1998. it was on my performa 6400. every mac I have had since has no floppy and I never use peecee's.
 
About 2 years ago I had a class in which I had to turn in my work on a floppy. Before that it was still a very long time since I needed a floppy--maybe 1999--after 1999 files got to big to fit on a floppy anyway and if i needed to transfer a small file to another computer I just emailed it.

Now suppose you received something on a floppy and you had to open it. How big an ordeal would that be?
 
Last time I used floppies was earlier this year....to archive their contents onto CD. Then I threw all the floppies away. :p
 
floppy's... err that should have been 3 years ago now...

my classic has a floppy drive but its never used

and even the pc wich I have here has no floppy drive in there, I replaced that with a Zip100 and even that drive I'm not using anymore...
cd/dvd/ipod/ext HDD/network that's how I get data in and out of my computers nowadays...

ok exept for the Classic, but I don't need to get any data out of that one ;-)
 
Rod Rod said:
On my old iBook it seemed to take forever. My new PowerBook handled it way faster. I guess USB 2.0 helps a lot.

No, Apple updated the drivers in using floppies form Jaguar to Panter. It's made a huge difference for me.


As for using floppies? Last I used one was about 10:30 A.M. this morning. I'm trying to fix a busted Macintosh SE/30. But before this week, I haven't used a floppy in almost 3 years.
 
Horrortaxi said:
Now suppose you received something on a floppy and you had to open it. How big an ordeal would that be?

it would be a minor hassle, because it'd just mean I'd have to find where I put my USB floppy drive and connect it... really no big deal.
 
5"

floppy.jpg


found this in a box of computer bits, MS dos v3.2 from 1987. Not sure where it came from as I have never had a dos machine!
 
musicpyrite said:
No, Apple updated the drivers in using floppies form Jaguar to Panter. It's made a huge difference for me.

That makes more sense...when I saw the other post, I was like, wow, need USB 2.0 to get full floppy speeds? I knew USB 1.1 was slow, but.... ;)

My previous school had Blackboard going which was sooo cool, but not everyone used it. It had cool file management tools -- students could deliver homework to a drop box and blackboard would centrally store everything with dates and resubmissions and stuff. The problem with something like that is its always a few TAs who'll bother to learn it, a bunch more TAs who will ignore it, and almost every single professor who'll ignore it. :(

I'm surprised someone mentioned zip disks...I think I've seen more floppies floating around than zip disks. It seems (or is it my limited slice of the world) that ZIP just fell into a black hole a few years ago -- I knew they still made drives but I never saw anybody use one anymore.
 
zip and jazz were welcome as a faster/cheaper alternative than MO disks and came just before cd-r started to get affordable so for a short while it was very welcome but very fast outdated and outrun by cd-r.

the graphic people (like me) were very happy when zip started (no more running around with external HD's to other people ;-) ) but thrilled when cd-r hit the shelves

but for people who only use small files floppy's were still (and in some cases still are) the best solution...
 
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