PC World stops stocking floppy disks

[Hum]

LONDON - PC World, Britain's largest chain of computer superstores, will say goodbye to floppy disks once the current stash is gone.

The retailer said Wednesday it opted not to reorder any more disks because they do not hold enough data and better alternatives exist.

PC World has about 10,000 disks in stock. With 155 stores across Britain and nearly 50 more elsewhere in Europe, spokesman Hamish Thompson said the final stock of floppies will be gone "in weeks, if not days."

"It's had a good, long and productive life, but really, it's just too small to hold any real data," Thompson said of the disks. "It just doesn't make sense any more."

A 3.5-inch floppy disk can store 1.44 megabytes of data; a typical MP3 song file can be twice that. And increasingly, customers are choosing to store their data on USB memory sticks or on external hard drives, so the demand for the floppy simply is not there, Thompson said.

Floppy disks were the preferred storage device during the early home computing days of the 1980s and 1990s, but by the end of the century, software moved from floppies to CDs. Many computers, including Apple Inc.'s Macintosh line, no longer have floppy disk drives.

Thompson said he believed some aficionados would continue to treasure the disks in the same way music fans love vinyl records. Bryan McGrath, the company's commercial director, said floppies have secured their place in history.

"The sound of a computer's floppy disk drive will be as closely associated with 20th-century computing as the sound of a computer dialing in to the Internet," McGrath said in a statement.

source

[dragon2611]

last time i actually used a floppy disk was .... Errm..... actally i can't remember haven't used em for ages.

Point being the floppy disc is pretty much dead, its next to useless thesedays.

only good thing about em was the ablity to boot of em to do system recovery but now you can do that from CD or even a USB drive.

[low]

why are they deciding to get rid of them now, they should have years ago.

[zeroday]

I should keep mine and then auction them off one day on Ebay (or googlebay :ninja: :p) Could be a collectors item :laugh:

[primexx]

Just like 2mb HDDs! lol

[Toology]

I only have one computer left in the house that even has a floppy drive. The rest are in the garage.

[Nathanael]

I only have one computer left in the house that even has a floppy drive. The rest are in the garage.

Yea well it's still a pain to install XP with RAID and no floppy. Therefor, most of the PCs I have still have a floppy drive.

[Aero Ultimate]

Long overdue... why didn't they already do this long ago?

I haven't used a floppy anymore for many, many years now, just as long as I don't have a floppy drive anymore.

It's mainboard manufacturers that really need to wake up now and ban this vintage crap from their boards (along with serial and parallel ports which are equally useless and superfluent now).

[NienorGT]

What is a floppy? Can we eat that?

[majortom1981]

Beleive it or not I still use them to install raid drivers and the like when I install xp.

[Aero Ultimate]

Beleive it or not I still use them to install raid drivers and the like when I install xp.

That's no good reason. You can use nLite or similar programs to integrate Raid drivers (or other required drivers) into your install. As a bonus, you can also remove all the stuff you don't want to install in the first place :cool:

See, no floppy required at all.

[DemonicHawk]

^ but for a first time clean install... that isn't possible

[Quillz]

I thought floppy drives died over a decade ago, as did Zip drives.

[YaddaMe]

10,000 disks in stock.

----------final stock of floppies will be gone "in weeks, if not days."

----------"It just doesn't make sense any more."

I'm in agreement with everyone else... and wonder who still uses them.

However, from the business POV, who cares how much data they store.... anything that people buy 10,000 of "in weeks, if not days" would probably still have a spot on the shelf.

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

I thought floppy drives died over a decade ago, as did Zip drives.

We still get a lot of basic computer cases with "Zip Drive" printed on one of the 3.5" slots.. I guess some people are a little unaware. :)

[DanManIt]

It's about time they get rid of them. No one uses them anymore. My current build doesn't have one and the last time I used a floppy was to transfer photos from one pc to another. Now I can just use my flash drive, so floppy drives have been dead to me.

[Hum]

:unsure: My BIOS musta thought floppy drives are useless -- wouldn't boot up a Western Digital utility disk, when I wanted to check and format my new hard drive.

[DeathGod]

Its about time people are making more moves to send those floppys where the belong,in the trash! I hated those things the first day it came it,they can hold almost nothing and get damaged inside and out way to easily.GOODBYE Floppy! Hello Sexy USB Flash Drives :p

[WAQT]

I just got my 4-GB USB stick today for $39 .... reminded me of those old days when the floppys were so expensive and the IN thing...

R.I.P!

[samirb]

Ya man. Using a floppy is like going back to the dinosaur age. Next is the turn of zip floppies and zip drives.

[Shibby]

From a normal household or IT business, then there is no need for them any more. Where as i'm sure some of the old manufacturers still use them on machines to hold instructions. But they probley buy them from a small company.

[Koolslacker]

I know a person who still uses floppy drive. We should have stopped using those long long time ago.

[+mrbester MVC]

Its about time people are making more moves to send those floppys where the belong,in the trash! I hated those things the first day it came it,they can hold almost nothing and get damaged inside and out way to easily.GOODBYE Floppy! Hello Sexy USB Flash Drives :p

I hope you're meaning the 8" or 5?" ones as 3?" weren't "floppy". If they were you'd broken them.

Ahh, happy days of the glorious expanse of 360K to play with, you could have a word processor and spreadsheet program and still have room for a few data files...