Shed a Tear for the Continuing Death of the Floppy Disk
Ah the floppy disk, portable media of my childhood, fragile vessel of games and homework assignments. Now, of course, the floppy has been eclipsed by the advent of cheap and available CD burners and the USB drives that get handed out like candy at any business event.
Sony has put another nail in the (well, lets face it, already pretty nailed) coffin of the humble 3.5 inch floppy by announcing that it will be discontinuing production of floppies for pretty much everywhere within a year.
From Examiner.com:
Sony will stop sales within Japan in March of 2011, and with the exception of a few niche markets such as in India, the company’s worldwide sales finished in March of this year, the Mainichi stated. Sony ceased its outsourced production of the 3.5 inch floppy in 2009. It is also noted that most other major manufacturers of the disk type have already withdrawn from the market entirely.
We had Reader Rabbit (yes, the original. For DOS) and The Playroom on floppy disk. Play’d it on an amber monochrome monitor, I did. Floppies were the mobile media du jour of middle school as well, back when Windows machines couldn’t read disks that had been formatted by a Mac. Even in high school, it was still more convenient to keep our music theory compositions on a floppy than anything else.
So stock up! If you even own a computer that still reads them. As you can see above, they have many other uses. Coasters, for example. And if some young chit of a kid asks you why they’re called “floppies” if they’re made of hard plastic, well, you tell them.
(via /.)
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