> > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On > Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk > Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 7:04 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Scouted: Dell follows Apple: Eliminates Floppies > > At 16:04 7-2-2003 -0500, Jon Gabriel wrote: > > >>>"You insert it right into the USB port, and your computer reads it just > >>>like it would read a floppy drive. The benefit is, you've got much more > >>>capacity -- instead of just 1.44 megabytes, at the low end you have 16 > >>>megabytes." > >> > >>Unless of course you are one of those hundreds of thousands of people who > >>still use Windows NT 4.0, which doesn't have USB support... > > > >Apple gave their users the same problem several years ago. We had > several > >hundred (around 5 - 600) floppies in my office that had to be converted > to > >cd. Took an intern days to copy them onto a hard drive, organize and
> >package them for burning. (I still remember her ripping them apart and > >shredding them to bits when she was done. Ruined a shredder, too.) > > > >Could have cheerfully killed Apple at the time. :( > > > >But... this has happened before with 5.25 floppies, so I guess there's a > >precedent. > > This still leaves users with another problem: boot floppies. When the OS > won't boot, you can still boot your computer with the OS boot floppy (or > rescue disk, or whatever it's called) and try and fix the problem -- or at > least backup your data before reinstalling everything. No floppy drive, no > emergency boot floppies... > Apple's standard solution was to treat the CD-R or CD-RW as the new floppy. Considering that the MacOS had become way too large to fit into 1.4MB's, they really had no choice. Since most, if not all modern computers have a 'boot from cd' option in the cmos, this is probably where dell will head. > >You weren't able to get that memory stick drive working?? > > Yes and no. It works under Windows 2000, and if and when I'll bother to > install the driver it will also work under Windows 98. However, both OS's > are running on the same PC (together with NT 4), so there is little use for > that memory stick. > > Can't use it for transferring data to other computers, either. The PC's I > use at work all run NT 4. If and when I need to transfer data between my > laptop and my home desktop PC, I do that over the network -- the only > doable option anyway, as the desktop PC is so old that it doesn't have an > USB port. USB cards are cheap these days. It's unfortunate about the memory stick. A waste of money for you :( Jon ROU Technology Sucks Sometimes _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
