Dell waves goodbye to floppy, other archaisms

MAYBE I MISSED the press release, but Dell Computers quietly dumped the 3.5 inch floppy drive as a standard option on one of its home system configurations. For the slim-line 460C, there is no space or open-mouthed slot for a floppy drive in the case.

On other systems, selecting a 3.5 drive is a highlighted - but not required - option under the web configuration tool. In a clever piece of psychological shading, Dell lists a memory key as another option to use for file transfer and lists it as the FIRST selection on a pop-up help window.

It also shipped a system to the Washington Post for review sans 3.5 here. In the words of the reviewer: "We didn't miss it."

Is it time to get out a fork and put it into the 3.5 floppy drive? I'd like to think so, but the stodgy world of computer manufacturers (i.e. Dell, E-machines, Gateway, HP, Sony) likely will keep the floppy as a standard "feature" on desktop machines for a while. The future is a little more promising with laptop machines; the ultra-slim crowd dumped floppies way long ago. Of course, the Apple people will be quick to tell you that they dumped those nasty things a couple of years ago.

For a long time, the 3.5", 1.44 MB floppy disk was my security blanket. I'd always travel with a couple of them so I could move files between computers and do document backups. For my circa-1997 laptop, it made a lot more sense and less weight than lugging along an external CD-RW. Over the years, I have had a lot of zealots network geeks lecture tell me that they didn't need no stinkin' floppies because they had the Internet and they were smug confident that they would be able to get network access regardless of their travels.

I think the last "bell toll" for the humble floppy was the double-whammy hit of MP3 and digital cameras. MP3 and music usage drove the proliferation of CD-writers and blank media, as well as a nice cheap way to store up to 660MB of uncompressed data in a clean shot. Multi-megapixel cameras generated files of 500Kb and larger per shot. Scrunching 3 unedited pictures onto a single floppy became a chore; again CDs became the preferred media for saving and passing around photos.

And even vanilla CD-RW drives look to be an endangered species since internal multi-standard DVD-writers are available for around $150-200 retail this minute. No doubt these little gems will be around $100-150, and tempt me to crack open the HP case, by summer time. With DVD-R media listing at around $2 per disk, it's a no-brainer not to put data in DVD format.

Currently, I'm using a PNY 64MB memory key that cost me around $30 U.S. last week. This week the 128MB key is around $30 with rebates - arrrgh! It's small enough that it unobtrusively rattles around with the other junk in my bag and the neck lanyard allows me to find it by touch. My one wish is that someone makes a camera that will transfer to a USB memory key on-the-fly but I suspect it isn't going to happen this year.

I would like to think the 3.5 floppy would disappear out of (non-Apple) machines within the next year or two, but even motherboard innovators such as Via seem to love holding onto legacy ports such as PS/2 mouse & keyboard, serial, and parallel. And the "expense" of a 3.5 floppy is likely under $10 bucks for the parts and a couple more dollars to install on an assembly line. µ

See Also
Goodbye parallel, serial ports, farewell floppy
Floppy drives take longer to die than expected
How do I save data on my eight inch floppy disks
Intel waves goodbye to old PC