Dell Saying Bye to Floppy Disk Drives

[SSP]

Floppy drive has saved my ass couple of times when the cd rom didnt work. It does have its uses once or twice. Also, its a lot easier to copy small word doc then to copy that little files to cd's.

 

[kami]

No floppy drive in my machine for almost 3 years. Never had a use for it...not once. It's stll in there, but it's just for looks because i fried it almost 3 years ago and never replaced it.

 

[Daniel]

Its an OPTION... which means you can get one if you want, they also offer the usb keychain w/ storage as an option too. It isn't the exact same thing apple did years ago but just flat out removing it.

 

[NakaNaka]

Originally posted by: Maverick2002
Once USB pen drives drop down in price they will be THE new floppy.

Yeah, but you have driver issues when your computer can only boot in standbye. I'm not a fan of this. My comp would only boot in safe mode a couple of weeks ago and floppys saved my life with a couple key files before I had to reformat.

 

[MichaelD]

Probably 75% or so of Dell's business is in government and large corporation mass sales of identical workstations that will be configured/managed over a network. Don't need floppies for those stations.

Also, w/the price drop and subsequent proliferation of CDRWs (most new Dells come w/one) floppies are really not vital/viable anymore.

That said, they cost $10 are are nice to have for those odd times that you need them. They don't take up a normal IDE channel, and it's not liek you can put any other device on the floppy channel anyway (LS120s aside here) I mean IDE HDs/DVD/etc.

 

[Dudd]

Bad move, IMO. I still use floppies all the time when I transfer C++ programs from my home computer to my school account. It's just easier than having to burn a CD-RW, and if I only have a CD-R lying around, waste a whole cd for one 30 kb file.

 

[blahsome]

I use floppy for:

1. BIOS updates.
2. (backup) Linux boot disk
3. Maxtor Low-Level Format utility.

 

[psianime]

I like floppys because I can transfer .doc files from one system to another without much sweat.

-psianime

 

[Lithium381]

bad move, i love my floppy...i don't use it that often, but just seeing it there makes me more comforatable.....and i was looking at the laptop...needs to have floppy....what are they thinking?@

 

[GoingUp]

teh gehy idea.... you always need em for sumpin

 

[dahunan]

Uh, excuse me for being stupid... but how in the hell will I flash the BIOS in my Motherboard without a floppy drive?

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: dahunan
Uh, excuse me for being stupid... but how in the hell will I flash the BIOS in my Motherboard without a floppy drive?

I use a bootable CD. I keep an archive of BIOS images on the CD and flash from there.

 

[dahunan]

Originally posted by: NFS4

Originally posted by: dahunan
Uh, excuse me for being stupid... but how in the hell will I flash the BIOS in my Motherboard without a floppy drive?

I use a bootable CD. I keep an archive of BIOS images on the CD and flash from there.

Well, I guess that would work Thank You

 

[deftron]

Intel asked manufacturers to do it in 2001


"Intel is finally inciting the death of the floppy drive and is calling on PC manufacturers big and small to stop supplying the once-capacious 1.44MB removable drive in the latter half of 2002. "


Guess they're finally getting around to it

 

[EvilYoda]

I haven't used a floppy in a few years either...don't have a floppy drive drive in this computer anyway, just use the network/CDs...not like I'm going to be buying a Dell for myself anytime soon.....got in on that huge Dell deal last year for the family tho.