Dell gives floppies the boot.

[Borgster]

well i dont know if this has been posted here yet, considering i was gone for a whole week, due to computer problems, but dell will no longer include floppie drives in there series. but you can buy an optional floppie drive from dell. the macintosh quit using them a long time ago, do you think other manufacturers like compaq, and gateway will also take away the floppie drives?

[Mr. Mainstream]

u need floppies there great for small files/

[CompuGeek]

I think all the manufacturers will ditch floppy drives. The average user they market to wouldn't even notice they were gone.

Only con is it will probably make it even more of a pain in the ass to flash the bios of a mobo or vid card.

[Theinfamousone]

Floppy is still the easiest thing for transfering text files. I don't think CD burners are quite standard enough yet to get rid of the only other real alternative (who wants to mess around with burning a DVD every time you want to take a report to your school to work on?) I'm glad I have a computer with a floppy drive still. I might not use them, but it's always nice to know it's there. I'm sure other companies will stop coming with them pretty soon too. Ten bucks says Gateway will be the last, I like them, and I think they are a little more realistic then Mac (and now Dell) who got rid of them years ago. My mac friend still has to email me stuff when he needs it on a floppy for various reasons.

[endersgame21]

Blu-Ray Discs will completely replace floppies anyways. They are just like floppies because all you have to do is click save instead of actually burning something to a CD. They also can hold up to 110 gigs both sides double layered. They will also replace VHS for the same reason, you can easily record shows. I am sorry I don't have a link. Just search it on google.

[tackdaddy]

the floppy drive saved my ass a couple of times when i needed a boot disk to get my computer fixed,so i still think they are useful.

[Wolfie]

I like floppies becasue floppy drives are pretty much standard on all computers and you can take them from almost any computer to another and it'll read it.

I still have some problems with some low end CD ROMs on campus computers (damm department soooo freaking cheap with computer equipment) that can't read the data CDs that I burn at home.

[endersgame21]

Oh, I almost forgot about usb flash drives. Those are my favorite because you can use them on any computer that has USB ports and they are small and can hold up to 1 gig currently.

[Dswissmiss]

It should also be noted that floppy drives only cost arround 8 dollars, so doesn't really matter and I'll keep mine until another format become more common.

[isus]

floppies suck. they are much to slow for daily use now. especially when you can boot a computer with a cd or even a usb hard drive...

what zebi said about formatting with floppies, thats a windows problem, sticking with legacy stuff is one of the bigger problems with windows. i think if windows made a 'legacy-free' version where they pulled out support for ps/2 and floppies and even legacy code in the kernel, we would see a MUCH faster windows and more stable windows too.

[notbob]

all new computers can boot from a cd (example--win 98 install disc) from which you can format etc.

the only computers that need floppies are 66mhz pentium 1's that i hope most of you have never seen (which cannot boot from a cd drive , like the gateway 2000 p5-100 in my basement)

floppies have been obsolete since 1998 (or even earlier) with the large scale distribution of cd burners

as far as floppies being useful for moving a text file, it's faster to just email it to your web email account and retrieve it when you need it

as for storing anything else, come on! you can't even get 1 mp3 on there (and even if you have a small one that does fit, it takes 3 minutes to load on there, which in the meantime i could have burned a 704 MB cd)

[nukehella]

Why would anyone care what Dell or Gateway or any manufacturer does?As long as you have a power supply -they rest is easy.Unless you are getting an expensive present.
Ummm-a legacy free version of Windows?That would certainly stimulate the economy.

Edit:Actually the power supply wouldn't be a big deal.But thank God(or whatever)for the third world shitholes that make the ribbon cables.I shudder to think of the working conditions.

[Borgster]

i havn't used a cd burner yet, because my comp is 3 years old, i can still upgrade it with all of todays technology like usb 2.0, and a high end graphics card, but i just havn't felt like buying a cd burner yet, i should though, it be good for backing up important data and stuff like that. id probably burn mp3's on it too, but im hardly ever away from my computer, so i just listen to them on the comp when i can do it.