After Floppies Ever Crutial?

[xierox]

Hi, I had a basic question about floppy disks that popped into my mind because I will be getting a new laptop this summer. Basically I noticed that most laptops nowadays seem to be shipping without floppy drives and that raised the question of whether they are really necessary anymore. I mean, is there anything that *absolutely* needs a floppy disk to run off of and cannot be run off a CD? Thanks for any input!

- Xierox

[|3lack|ce]

Most computers these days ship without floppy drives - it's a dying and near dead technology. With the advent of CD-RW's there is truly no need for a floppy disk.

[©opy®ight]

And for small files, why waste a CD, buy a flash drive

[nihil]

Haaaaaaaaaaaarr!

Once upon a time when I was young and handsome (and dinosaurs ruled the earth) I used to fit LS120 drives..................that's a 120Mb floptical that will read/write to a 1.44/3.5"

Our man from Croatia has it right with the USB device, but the floppy is good for stuff to give away?..........these days I would say spend the extra on a DVD and then you can pick your media?

Definitely for a laptop IMHO

[xierox]

So you are saying that if I needed to use fdisk I could put it on a usb drive or a cd-rw?

[|3lack|ce]

That's where I keep my toolbox, safe and sound on a CD - since I can multi rewrite I add to it as I find updated and newer stuff.

[xierox]

You understand I'm talking about tools like I'd use to format my hard drive or write zeros to it, correct? /is a bit confused.

[nihil]

X~

I sincerely hope that nothing so dramatic happens to you..................but yes, we keep a toolkit on a CD/DVD to be able to recover lost causes.

I used to do this with LS120s and ZIP 100s..................but I actually own 8.25" floppies now that IS going back a while

[xierox]

Thanks, everyone for you quick replies!

[|3lack|ce]

/me stands up and affirms as if at an AA meeting:

"Hello, My name is |ce and I am an old fart who remembers and has used 8 inch floppy disks."

I'm curious how many of the younguns around here can match that statement... Hell, I wonder how many of them can remember 5 1/4" ones...