UK Retailer Stops Stocking Floppy Disks

[Boyd Ostroff]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070131/techb...pies.html?.v=2

PC World, Britain's largest chain of computer superstores, will say goodbye to floppy disks once the current stash is gone.
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PC World has about 10,000 disks in stock. With 155 stores across Britain and nearly 50 more elsewhere in Europe, spokesman Hamish Thompson said the final stock of floppies will be gone "in weeks, if not days."

I have hardly used a floppy disk in the last 7 or 8 years. I remember the iMac was controversial when first introduced without a floppy drive. The only exception for me is our computer light board in the theatre. It still uses a floppy drive to backup files of light cues from its internal hard drive.

I can't say that I miss floppies, they were slow and unreliable. But I remember my Apple ][ computer back in 1978. I pre-ordered the floppy drive when it was announced - before that you had to use a cassette tape recorder for data storage. I thought those 5.25" floppies were huge - a whole 115,000 bytes of data! Then a little later they did a firmware upgrade which increased the capacity to 140,000 bytes :-)

Those were the days....

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070131/techb...pies.html?.v=2

But I remember my Apple ][ computer back in 1978. I pre-ordered the floppy drive when it was announced - before that you had to use a cassette tape recorder for data storage. I thought those 5.25" floppies were huge - a whole 115,000 bytes of data! Then a little later they did a firmware upgrade which increased the capacity to 140,000 bytes :-)

Those were the days....

5.25???? Wimpy little mini-disks! A REAL MAN'S disk was 8 inches ... ROFL

[Boyd Ostroff]

Yeah, we had one of those in the office - the "pro" version of the TRS-80 which had a built-in 12" screen and two 8" internal floppy drives. CPU was a Z-80 running the CP/M disk operating system.

[Richard Alvarez]

Yup, I have a stack of FLOPPY floppy discs... waaay back in the back of my closet. Has some old tax info on 'em. Guess I should trash 'em by now.