Buying new computer

[Guest]

I am buying a new dell.
Please give opinions on single cdrw combo drives vs dual writeable drives.
I don't do anything fancy. I don't burn music or movies. I mainly do quicken
and search the internet.I sometimes download pictures from my camera. I have
a flash drive. Is it a good idea to have a floppy drive in addition.

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

I am buying a new dell.
Please give opinions on single cdrw combo drives vs dual writeable drives.
I don't do anything fancy. I don't burn music or movies. I mainly do
quicken
and search the internet.I sometimes download pictures from my camera. I
have
a flash drive. Is it a good idea to have a floppy drive in addition.

1. I assume you mean dual layer drives, in which case unless you think
you may need to write a DVD disc of more than 4GB, then I think the
additional cost simply isn't justified. Further two single layer disks are
less expensive than one dual layer. Further there are no erasable dual layer
disks.
2. With respect to a floppy drive, my opinion is that while floppy disks
are being used less and less they are not dead yet and there are still many
instancers when a floppy is very useful, not least when updating a BIOS.
The premium for a floppy drive should be small, no more than $10, so I would
get a floppy drive.

 

[Guest]

The advantage of dual (Two separate) drives is the ability to copy CDs
directly, instead of having to copy to the HD, then to a CD. There are times
when you might want to have two CDs in play for other reasons as well. It
sounds as though you don't need either of these functionalities, so a single
drive is fine.
I personally recommend that floppy drives not be purchased unless you have a
need to access old floppies. They are not a reliable storage medium, and the
lack of a floppy will encourage you to use the much more reliable the CD
burner for backups, copies, etc.

 

[Jonny]

Dunno if you're buying a laptop, desktop, or a can opener.
Dunno what you're trying to say regarding cdrw etc. Abnormal verbage.
You don't sound like you know what to do with floppy drive if you got into
trouble. May help out if someone was trying to fix your laptop/desktop/can
opener.

 

[Alias]

I am buying a new dell.
Please give opinions on single cdrw combo drives vs dual writeable drives.
I don't do anything fancy. I don't burn music or movies. I mainly do quicken
and search the internet.I sometimes download pictures from my camera. I have
a flash drive. Is it a good idea to have a floppy drive in addition.

Make sure they give you XP on a CD. Get the floppy.

Alias

 

[Guest]

Don't BUY for what you think you need NOW, buy for what you may want two
years down the road. This will allow you to grow into your computer.
The great thing about todays cmputers is you can use them for many
household uses that they could not be used for just a couple of years ago.
You can watch TV on them, record programs direct to the computer from
Satelitte or cable. You can be your own Photo Developer. You can edit your
photos, save them in a good format such as Tif and then dwnload them to CD or
even do a movie on DVD, using your photos, slides, or Movies.
Two CD recorders are always better than one for the simple reason thatyou
can put the source CD in one and the Blank Cd to recieve the data in the
other. I prefer the latest have two Double Layer DVD recorders, they will
record or read all of the CD formats as well as the DVD formats, so unless
there is something Special, I use regular DVDs to record on but Band Of
Brothers is recorded on DL and takes up half as many DVDs. Storage is more
improtant than cost.
Buy a Good sound card and good graphics card and open te doors to more
fun and more uses than you dreamed possible with your computer and have a
ball doing the tasks. I could not even to begin to afford to pay a film
Devloper what I do normally with my photos and than I copy them to DVD. When
I am ready to pass on, all of the family photos from and now and before will
be safely saved on a DVD and each of my daughters will have some copies. No
need to wonder who gets the Old Family Album.
I have recorded many thousands of songs on my Computer and I mix and
match when I make Cds ad enjoy my music My way. I play it at home on my
system as well and for a few dollars more I have a music player in my kitchen
that sounds as good as my Home Audio System.
Then there is Entertainment, al kinds of games can be played and if you
have no room for Games in your life, there is educational programs that may
be purchased and they have Videos within them to give examples. Kids or
yourself have the ability to learn far more and more efficient than ever
before.
So think, about what you would enjoy doing and buy a computer that will
do it and then some.
Enjoy and Happy Computering

 

[Bill Sharpe]

I am buying a new dell.
Please give opinions on single cdrw combo drives vs dual writeable drives.
I don't do anything fancy. I don't burn music or movies. I mainly do quicken
and search the internet.I sometimes download pictures from my camera. I have
a flash drive. Is it a good idea to have a floppy drive in addition.

A USB memory stick is an excellent replacement for a floppy drive. I
bought a Dell laptop two years ago and haven't seen the need for a
floppy as yet.

Bill
(who still has some 160k single-sided 5 1/4 inch floppy disks from 1983
in his file cabinet)

 

[Jim Macklin]

Whether you need a floppy drive may depend on whether you
have a lot of files already on floppies that you need to
use. A floppy can be useful and they are not expensive, but
the space could be used for a card reader which can be more
useful.
AS for what kind of optical drives to get, again it is a
matter of money now and future possible uses. Just spec'd
out a new Dell for my wife with a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW DL
drive which will also read/write CDs. Having two optical
drives can make copying easier. DVDs are becoming more
common and less expensive.

It is less expensive to get the computer with the hardware
you need in the original order. My wife wanted a computer
to do office tasks and use Dragon Naturally Speaking
dictation. So we went with the on-board 950 graphics but
the top line sound card with a Firewire port as a bonus.[If
we need better graphics later, the PCIe slot is there and he
cards will be better, graphics is the place that advances
the fastest] Didn't get a built-in card reader since we have
the Lexar USB 2.0 Multicard Reader. No floppy, but if she
needs to read a floppy she can use my computer and save the
files to the Shared folder.


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.
some support
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm



| marilyn wrote:
| > I am buying a new dell.
| > Please give opinions on single cdrw combo drives vs dual
writeable drives.
| > I don't do anything fancy. I don't burn music or movies.
I mainly do quicken
| > and search the internet.I sometimes download pictures
from my camera. I have
| > a flash drive. Is it a good idea to have a floppy drive
in addition.
|
| A USB memory stick is an excellent replacement for a
floppy drive. I
| bought a Dell laptop two years ago and haven't seen the
need for a
| floppy as yet.
|
| Bill
| (who still has some 160k single-sided 5 1/4 inch floppy
disks from 1983
| in his file cabinet)

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Whether you need a floppy drive may depend on whether you
have a lot of files already on floppies that you need to
use. A floppy can be useful and they are not expensive, but
the space could be used for a card reader which can be more
useful.

Another choice is a combination diskette/card reader. My new computer has a
7-in-1 diskette drive/card reader combo, and it cost me only $29.

By the way, another possible need for a diskette drive is loading SATA/RAID
drivers when installing Windows. I needed it for this computer.

My personal view is that, with or without the card reader, a diskette drive
is cheap enough that I just want to have one. I don't use it often, but I
don't ever want to find myself in the position of coming across something I
need it for and forgotten about. For the few extra dollars, I'll be sure
I'll never have a problem because one isn't present.

 

[Plato]

I am buying a new dell.

Spend the 20 for the 1.44.

 

[Jonny]

And, last I looked, most bios won't allocate hardware irq 6 to something
other than an onboard floppy controller.

Did get around this on one Asus board whose bios let assign an irq to a
given PCI slot. PCI slot hardware irq sharing was still enforced.

Most PCs without a floppy drive may find hardware irq 6 as available but not
usable for anything else.

 

[Plato]

Most PCs without a floppy drive may find hardware irq 6 as available but not
usable for anything else.

Heck, even the latest Dell in the Sunday paper shows no floppy drive,
but the case still has a bay for it in the picture.

 

[Jim Macklin]

We just bought a new Dell E510, without a floppy, but the
floppy cable is installed very neatly. A very nice and
quiet computer.

That model did not come with media on CDs, but I did get a
complete set with a phone call. Seems Dell doesn't
understand that people who spend $600+ really want the $1.00
worth of plastic since they have paid for the software.
They spent more than the cost of the media on customer
service than the software cost.


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.
some support
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm



| Jonny wrote:
| >
| > Most PCs without a floppy drive may find hardware irq 6
as available but not
| > usable for anything else.
|
| Heck, even the latest Dell in the Sunday paper shows no
floppy drive,
| but the case still has a bay for it in the picture.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| --
| http://www.bootdisk.com/
|
|

 

[Plato]

We just bought a new Dell E510, without a floppy, but the
floppy cable is installed very neatly. A very nice and
quiet computer.

Couldn't resist eh? You just had to take it apart the first day you got
it

 

[Jim Macklin]

Yep, I also had to install the old hard drive from the old
computer as a slave to make file transfer easy. The new
E510 has SATA hard drive support and an IDE cable for the
optical drives. I just unplugged the DVD and DVD-DL RW
drives and plugged the old 20 GB drive in and copied the
whole dive to a folder in a partition I had created using
PM. Then it was just a matter of putting everything back as
it was.
That 20 GB drive is now in my computer since my wife also
has a 100 GB external drive.


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.
some support
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm



| Jim Macklin wrote:
| >
| > We just bought a new Dell E510, without a floppy, but
the
| > floppy cable is installed very neatly. A very nice and
| > quiet computer.
|
| Couldn't resist eh? You just had to take it apart the
first day you got
| it
|
|

 

[Grpa]

I am buying a new dell.
Please give opinions on single cdrw combo drives vs dual writeable
drives.
I don't do anything fancy. I don't burn music or movies. I mainly do
quicken
and search the internet.I sometimes download pictures from my camera. I
have
a flash drive. Is it a good idea to have a floppy drive in addition.

I just bought a Dell witout the floppy because I have my old one.
Trouble: my floppy A drive could not be installed because the cabinet
was not designed for a floppy. There was room for another CD drive and
I had another dual floppy drive that used 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 inch floppies
and was the same size as a CD (Epson SD 800). It fit well after I
figured out how to take the cabinet apart. Problem: Windows XP did not
detect B drive though it did recognize A drive. I have browsed for info
on why this is so or what to do so it will recognize B drive. To no
avail so far. If I don't get this ironed out I think I will return to
Windows ME. I don't have the time to copy all my 5 1/4 info onto CD
cause it would take me forever.

 

[Ron Sommer]

I believe XP only has drivers for 1.44 MB 3 1/2 floppy drives.

 

[Ron Sommer]

Did you go into the Bios and check if B was set to 5.25 floppy?

 

[Bob Knowlden]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309623/en-us

"Floppy Disk Formats That Are Supported in Windows XP"

. 1.44 megabyte (MB) 3.5" floppy disk (read, write, format)
. 720 kilobyte (KB) 3.5" floppy disk (read, write only)
. 1.2MB 5.25" floppy disk (read, write only)
. 360KB 5.25" floppy disk (read, write only)


I've not used any sort of 5 1/4" drive under XP, but Microsoft claims that
they're supported.

I think that the floppy controller on a PC of recent manufacture may not
support more than a single drive. Going back to ME wouldn't help that. The
obvious solution would be to obtain an old single drive (eBay)? but I've not
done it myself. That assumes that there's no simple modification to the
3.5"/5.25" dual drive to make it behave like a single 5.25" one.

I'd refer the original poster to Dell support, but I'd be surprised if they
could come up with information of that nature. The demand for getting data
off 5 1/4" floppies must be rather, er, limited in 2006.


Address scarmbled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Ron Sommer]

Grpa doesn't have to worry about anybody stealing data from his 5.25 disks.
Grpa must not value his data too much if it is not worth his time to back it
up to a CD.

Going back to ME will not help if the Bios won't recognize the 5.25 floppy.
Windows ME may recognize the 5.25 floppy, but there is probably some new
hardware on his new Dell that ME doesn't support.