Floppy

[eric ng]

Hiya,
As everybody notices, every new pc all equiped with a 3.5" floppy which I
find it almost useless as every machine can be booted up via CDs, or some
via SCSI drives. Is there any pc manufacturer consider replacing the small
capacity, out of date floppy with some other formats, e.g. mini disc, MO,
zip......which does not need special software to read and write them for
portability?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hiya,
As everybody notices, every new pc all equiped with a 3.5" floppy which I
find it almost useless as every machine can be booted up via CDs, or some
via SCSI drives. Is there any pc manufacturer consider replacing the small
capacity, out of date floppy with some other formats, e.g. mini disc, MO,
zip......which does not need special software to read and write them for
portability?

MOD does not require special software, as it is a standard
SCSI/IDE removable disk drive. I have long had an MOD right
above my floppy drive. The problem with MOD is that the
drives are professional equipment (not low-cost consumer
equipment) and therefore expensive. However the disks are
cheap and _very_ reliable and durable, making it my rewritable
medium of choice.

Mini disk is not really a data storage format. I am
not sure there ever where computer drives for them.

Zip is horribly unreliable but I think is doesn not require
special software today.

USB-dongles have extreme media cost.

LS-120 did never really catch on and I think it required drivers.

Bottom line: Get the thing that is right for you and install it
yourself. The champions for portability are CD-R/RW and
USB-dongles.

Regards,
Arno