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Dell Dropping The Floppy
adambwells writes "Dell wants to stop including floppy drives as standard hardware on its Dimension line of desktops, and will start this practice later this quarter, as reported in this Yahoo article. Says Dell's product marketing: We would like to see customers migrate away from floppies as quickly as possible, because there are better alternative technologies out there ... it's an antique technology. At some point, you've got to draw the line. You wouldn't think of using a processor from 15 years ago." They plan to educate their customers about recordable CDs and USB pen drives as replacements."
Next thing you know, they're going to take away our serial ports and PS/2 ports. Bastards.
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I say good riddance to the floppy. I've had more of them go bad on me than I care to count.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
And I really don't think a CDR/CDRW is yet the answer to storage, unless UDF is standardized enough (as in supported at the OS level).
Boot Disk?
Must not have lasted long... I remember 5.25" and 3.5" floppies (and I've heard about the 8" drives of yore), but I've never heard of a 3.25" floppy. ;o)
but they're handy when needed,why waste a cd for a file smaller than 1.44 megs?
I've had my drives in every system, but they all go bad from dust exposure in a few months from lack of use. Not that I can find a 3 1/2" disk that works without buying a new box, anyway.
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When I grow up, I want to be a kid again.
Unless one of them is a Mac.
Not everyone has a CDRW, and not everyone has USB key-drives. But ALL PCs have floppies.
Ñ'
My first reaction was "Yay Dell!". Then I thought what if I need to update the BIOS of my motherboard.
Does the average Joe User know how to make a bootable CD? Most PC BIOS are unable to boot from USB or Firewire yet, so it seems like creating a bootable CD to do firmware upgrades is the only option.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Can I boot from a USB drive? And what about all of those install disks I still get? Hard Drive manufacturers still have their disk setup programs based on a floppy disk install.
Also, I can't use USB drives at the machines at work (due to security risks of removing sensitive data). Sure, you can remove data on a floppy, but try doing that with a 50+ MB compressed file.
pc floppies have one key quality - they are almost universally supported.
sure, they are old and a bit slow, but they are useful because of their omnipresence. for moving snippets of data from here to there under any condition, it is still hard to beat floppies.
usb key drives are nice - i have one - but they need to get a bit cheaper. then they would be a nice replacement for the "quick snippet" niche.
"You wouldn't think of using a processor from 15 years ago."
And why not? If it does the job, why should I care when the processor was made? Dell's trying hard to sell new products, and that's understandable, but it's ridiculous to think that everybody buys stuff just because it's "new". Heck, I'm still using hardware from the early 90's (10 years old), and it works fine. I'm not gonna blow money on something just because it's "new".
And as far as alternative technologies, they're still not good enough. I've never heard of a "USB Pen", and I'm sure as hell not going to waste money on some cutting edge technology that nobody's using yet. CD-R's are either very slow, one time burns, or very slow, very incompatible CD-RW's. Neither is good if I need to sneakernet a bit of data.
But then again, I'm not a Dell customer. I use a computer until it literally falls apart, and then I buy a closeout or used computer at great prices when I need a "new" one. No point in spending top dollar for a computer these days unless you're into games, or you have some big server needs.
They're like phone booths: I never use them but I still want to have them around!
I just got a new thinkpad and my IT department thinks no one needs a floppy. Now I can not support current customers: that will not allow me to connect ot their network, and do not have cd-rom on thier machines, network loaded. And do not have USB turned on. But they do have floppies drives.
I have to customer software from time to time that the master key comes encrypted on a floppy. Realy great the most servers that I get to work on do not now have floppies.
Can some one tell DELL and hardware houses, that the customer right? We need equipment to meet customer needs not some point head pencil pusher.
I hope that they will make CDRW drives standard at this point. Colin
I dunno, the USB key/pen/stick/whatever drives aren't anywhere near as convenient as floppies yet. There are still lots of old PCs out there that don't have USB. Lots more do have it, but the ports are in back and a pain to get to.
CDRs on the other hand have been around a lot longer and work on more platforms. Now that new CD burners don't make coasters nearly as often, just give us small cheap 80mm CDRs with thin jewelboxes to carry them in and you have a great floppy replacement.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Well, at least this avoids mistakes during flashing, as now you can no longer flash...
Say no to software patents.
Parallel Port: I'd like to keep using my older printers and my old parallel Zip Drive. It's slow, but handy sometimes.
Serial Ports: How else are you supposed to hook up a dumb terminal to your computer. USB?
Seriously, there's no reason to drop these devices. Why not include them with the newer stuff.
Besides, USB is not to be trusted.
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When Apple dropped the floppy drive it was "stupidity."
When Dell drops the floppy drive it'll be called "innovation."
Will they allow things like BIOS flash updates to run from El Torito cdroms? I mean last time I checked most low level utilities will check to make sure they aren't running out of a virtual floppy because when the BIOS is being overwritten etc the virtualization tech might break and leave the system in an unrecoverable state.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Heck, why just they use those mini CDRW's of about 150MB? Just throw into the package a bunch of them! Label them as 'FREE' and you will se that people will start buying it!
Just a thought...
var sig = function() { sig(); }
Terrible device? Like the PS/2 port or parallel printers? We just got away from the ISA bus. How about the i386 instruction set? That's the real problem with PCs: they're an awfully old foundation on which to build anything.
I remember being in high school ('86-'90), I'd carry about floppies with me all year around
Wow. That's probably all you remember from high school, since you most likely never got laid with cheerleaders, partied, or played football.
Now I'll be honest that I haven't looked into whether or not USB solid state storage is standard across the board, but if they're doing away with floppies then I had better be able to boot from my USB pen/key/dongle storage device if & when needed by simply changing the boot order.
//ct
If I want/need to run some low level hardware diagnostics (IBM's Drive Fitness Test tool anyone?) or flash to a new BIOS revision or update the firmware on a SCSI controller - a floppy is basically the only way to go - especially with downloadable updates that REQUIRE you to create a floppy from them.
If the only way I can update these parts is by disassembling the now crippled machines & putting their components into a machine that does have a floppy to update them, then replace (x 250 machines...) - Dell can count on number of enterprise customers nixing them from the list of potential hardware vendors. Don't limit my options - period.
But that's just my opinion.
like, how am I going to boot to a prompt to flash a BIOS? I know dell can do away with floppies cause they probably have some CD boot flash program, but not the rest of us who build our own PCs.
I think some people are missing the point. Dell isn't going to include floppy drives as a "standard" features. I say, so what. If you really want a floppy drive, and some people do, then have it installed extra. If you use a floppy boot disc on occasion, keep an extra floppy drive around to use for those rare times. But in my experience (and I am sure in most peoples) I haven't used a floppy drive in about ten years.
Think about it..
Floppies retail cost anywhere from 15-20 bucks. So you're looking at about an extra $800 bucks in parts for all your PC's.
For $800 these days you can add a nice bit of hard disk space to your 40 clients. Prices have dropped around a dollar a gigabyte. You can also buy a decent backup system for around that price too to back them all up. Hell you can even get a pretty decent networked laserjet for that price.
Personally, I would much rather have more hard disk space or backup for the network than a floppy. I agree with Dell %100 on this issue.
Yes, but a rescue CD is better, because you can fit more diagnostic software and whatnot on it.
and thus the comparitive cost of CD vs floppy media would make it stupid to burn 1M of data onto a 650M CD.
You can get 50 CD-Rs for $30, and that's already expensive. A manufactured rescue CD would cost less than $1.
Plus there's still the fact that floppies are good for the transferring of some media types, like short word processing documents and pictures.
Yes, but a CD-R or USB keychain or iPod is better, because they can also transfer bigger stuff like MP3s.
Particularly if we're talking parents and grandparents that have that donated pre-Pentium computer without a CD rom
A CD-ROM drive upgrade for those 8-year old PCs is only slightly more expensive, but vastly more useful, than a floppy drive.
there's still plenty of reasons for floppy use.
But it's redundant now, even if it costs only $10. Redundancy is not a good thing on commodity products.
>PS/2 USB converter.
Yay, $30 to replace a $2 IC and $0.50 connector. Not that the connector counts, as you did have to pay for a USB connector anyways.
>Get a print server for your old printers (two-ports can be had for under $100, and networking them is a snap), and buy a CD-RW drive. ZIP drives are slow, kludgy, low-capacity, and have a tendency to click your media (and drive) to death at a seemingly random time (usually disk 13 of 26 is the victim).
So, spend $100 to replace a $0.50 port again (which again, you still would have paid for as a USB port). Bad investment. There's actually no cost for the IC -- AFAIK, nobody actually make a floppy, serial, and parallel-less chipset/multi-io yet, so the only savings is in not placing the port on the mobo.
Plus, this guy should buy a new zip drive to read his backups? Bad idea.
>Will the 0.02% of the population using dumb-terminals on their home PCs please stand up?
I'd tell you what serial ports are still being used for, but then I'd be in trouble via the DMCA. Suffice it to say there are about 5 - 10 million of them in use commonly today, the number is ever growing, and that you might want to read about the ISO-7816 standard.
>Becauses the busses are slow, kludgy, and cost sillicon and valuable board real-estate that could be used for UATA133 or additional USB 2.0 (450+ MB/Sec) or IEEE1394 / FireWire (400+ MB/Sec) connectors, or to make motherboards smaller and/or less expensive.
A) It's already in all chipsets I know of. My legacy-free laptop still has a controller with floppy, serial, and parallel just to do IR.
B) Valuable board real-estate? Uhh, VLSI was invented a long time ago. If 1 sq. in. makes or breaks a full size computer (or most laptops) the designer is on crack.
C) Really, we're talking zero-cost here, it's nothing more than a money grab to make a computer "legacy-free" -- that is, unless you are going to give me a better price on it.
>I'll assume you've got some figures to support this otherwise baseless claim?
Baseless? Uhhuh... try harder to troll next time.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
iMacs sucked 'cos they dropped the floppy. There's nothing more irritating than using an iMac, Sparc , and now a Dell, and not being about to save your document to a floppy in a matter of seconds. Floppies are more convenient than a cd burner for the small jobs.
As someone who currently supports end users of windows over the phone, you'd be surprised how oftern a boot floppy is used to get to a DOS prompt so we can if a problem is hardware or software based
I don't mind if they will let me boot from the USB pen drive.
Raj
Good job Dell?
Sorry but although the chances of a home user needing to rebuild a system, or boot off floppy for any reason are minimal. The cost of such device is that, that I question what they are trying to achieve.
How many virus programs request to have "images" placed onto disk? Emergency boot disks for OS's?
Some of us still want floppy drives, and that's all there is to it. It costs Dell something like $5 to put a floppy drive into a machine as it's being manufactured, but it costs me a lot more in terms of time to install one. If Dell wants to shave a little bit more of its manufacturing costs, that's fine, but then I won't buy one because a floppy drive is on my baseline requirements checklist, as is a keyboard, mouse, CD burner, 3D accelerator card, and somewhere to plug speakers in.
...or at least that's what everybody said about the iMac four and a half years ago.
The only reason most people use floppy drives is A) because a driver or something comes on floppy, or B) an emergency boot disk for when the OS is hosed, C) making one of the above to be used in another machine, or D) transporting small files (Word documents) between computers.
A) is easily solved: the companies who currently ship floppies need to ship CDs instead. CDs are pretty cheap; this is not unreasonable. But, there's no motivation to do it as long as everyone has a floppy drive. Dell removing floppies (and others following suit) is a good motivator.
B) isn't an issue on new versions of Windows since it won't boot from a floppy anyway. PC users tend to forget that OS CDs are bootable!
C) is an issue for those of us with a 486 in the corner. Yes, I need a floppy drive in that machine, since it won't boot from CD. That's my only floppy drive, though.
D) can be done just as well (better!) with a USB keychain. Bigger capacity, and they work on nearly any computer. As far as I know, they're even bootable.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The floppy issue is not a PC problem -- it's specific to the Windows disk scheduling system, and will probably never be fixed.
I can use floppies in my Linux box quite happily. It's just like another hard drive.
(Pet Peeve: that goddamn mechanical eject button *sucks*. Apple was smart enough not to use it, but it was devised in an age that didn't have enough memory to do buffered disk I/O, and it's a royal pain for those of us with OSes that can buffer up writes -- you *can* manually eject the thing w/o umounting it).
Mechanical ejects should only be used as an emergency measure...
Haven't seen what things are like in OS X (heck, may be hard to find an OS X system with a floppy), but I doubt things are that different from BSD -- probably works just fine too.
May we never see th
Floppy disks have seriously gone downhill in quality.
I still have a 720k floppy from 1994 that got me through all 4 years of high school (School provided the disk to avoid viruses.) Still worked last time I checked it.
I consider myself lucky to get a modern floppy to work more than a few times before dying.
They are:
- small
- getting cheaper
- fast enough
- already being used on PDAs, digital cameras and other gadgets
The only downside is there are at least 5 types of them! (SD, MMC, MS, CF, SM). However there are already plenty of card readers in the market that accept all of them. Some of these devices can be installed into the 3.5" enclosures that are being used for floppy drives for now. So I think it is a reasonable replacement for floppy drives. I've even seen floppy drive + 6in1 card reader combo.
The successor to UDF is called Mt Ranier. It is supported by Linux but not (yet) by Windows, although most drives 24x and faster can handle it. It is a good thing, for it makes CD-RWs suck less.
Ahead software also makes UDF software for windows, as do Sony and NTI.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Anyone with an ASUS A7V-266 board knows how anoying it is to bootup especially if you're using ATA-1xx.
Could somebody explain to me why this has not been done?
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
I hate floppies. I am responible for mataining over 300 PCs for one department at a university. Each semseter I have to replace 30 to 40 floppies because students shove their disks in without regard for the drive. The metal flap always falls off and damages the head. Or the student complains that their floppy works at home but here. Starting at the end of summer 2002 I removed the floppies from all department labs. I put in 250 MB zip drives. The students and faculty complained. I told them to use the zip drive, most were already using the zip drive because the assignments are too large to fit on floppies any more. I also suggested they purchase one of the mini usb drives (the diskonkey stuff works nice). They come in 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB models and they are cheaper than having to buy an expensive zip drive and expensive media. Plus all of our PCs have front mounted USB ports. I am planning on replacing 1 lab of PCs with Wyse thin clients, if Wyse ever gets around to releaseing a thin client that can support a zip drive. I hear Wyse is going to release a thin client this year that has front mounted usb ports. I am eagerly waiting for this. Now if only they would get rid of the serial and parallel ports I would happier.
Got to transfer a small file? email it
Transfer something bigger? Burn a CD
Or even use your LAN/WAN/WLAN, whatever.
Basically floppy disks are dead when it comes to file transfer.
What's this I hear about flashing your BIOS? Last time I did a firmware update on my iMac I dowloaded the file, ran the program, rebooted & held down the "programming" button on the side.
Quick easy and painless.
What the big problem with PC mobo makers that they can't get their head's around this?
If Dell ditch floppies then maybe they'll be forced to devise a better method.
If you use a RAID controller for connecting your harddisk(s) then you cannot install Win2000 or WinXP without a floppy containing the RAID drivers.
Apple dropped the floppy five years ago. The whole industry predicted that either it would kill Apple, or they'd have floppy drives back in the very next generation of machines.
Neither happened. Life went on, because the floppy really was archaic and outdated; alternatives really did exist.
Now, granted, these were Macs, which have just about always had much better hardware/software integration than five years previous. As a Mac user myself, this argument of "but what about machines which don't boot off of USB or Firewire?" looks utterly absurd, because, well, why the hell aren't these machines capable of booting off of it? Or this bit about "How can the average user make bootable CD's?"; why the hell should making bootable CD's be so difficult that the average user can't do it?
Maybe it's just that I come from a Mac background, where things Just Work. But honestly, it sounds like the only reasons to keep the floppy around on the PC would be dealing with fundamental flaws in the PC's architecture. Then again, it's rather ironic that Dell uses a "you wouldn't use a processor that was 15 years old" when they use an outdated architecture that's even older, so maybe there's something to that. A blind insistence on pack-ratting old technologies, maybe, at the expense of advancement?
. . . Until that's available, I want my floppy! CDs are a pain in the ass. Sure I can boot to one, but can I write to it as easily as the floppy I just booted to?
Dell marketoids dont have the forethought for such things. It wouldn't take much to rig the bios to read flash memory. Sony will probably be first. (Boot to mem-stick!)
I'm a helpdesk worker at a small midwestern college, and all I can say is: Good.
A few weeks ago, a graduate student came up to me in tears because she was saving her portfolio - at least two year's work on a floppy disk, and all of a sudden it just refused to read it. The disk had gone bad, and she didn't have any backups. I know it was silly of her to not back something like that up, but not everyone is computer literate, and not everyone knows that floppies are one of the most unstable forms of storage media out there.
In fact, it seems every week someone comes or calls me to magically fix their disk which has their twenty page Shakespeare paper or their proof positive of cold fusion. All I can do is try to use it on the three computers here, and if that doesn't work, say "Sorry, you're out of luck. Use the handy network drive we provide you with next time."
It kills me every time I have to say that.
Not a whole lot of people at this college are computer literate, and many don't know how easily disks can go bad. That's not their fault... I'd say it's high time to ditch the floppy, given with how user friendly CD burners have become, especially in regards to how seamlessly they are integrated into XP.
Think about this. One CD has the capacity of 500 floppies. Now think about how much even a pack of 10 floppies costs when compared to that one CD.
It's high time that we give the floppy its death knell.