Sony announces the death of the floppy disk

[mac]

From CNET News:

April 25, 2010 2:15 PM PDT Sony delivers floppy disk's last ritesby Steven Musil The days of the 3.5-inch floppy disk are now officially numbered. Sony, which boasts 70 percent of the anemic market, announced Friday that it would end Japanese sales of the ancient storage medium in March 2011, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily newspaper. The 3.5-inch floppy was a ubiquitous and necessary component for storing and transferring files between personal computers for nearly three decades. Sony pioneered the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, eventually replacing the 5.25-inch floppy disk that had previously been the popular storage format. However, as the size of files and programs grew, the floppy disk was pushed aside by inexpensive and larger-format storage medium. Thanks to the creation of storage methods such as CDs, DVDs, Zip, and USB drives, Sony saw its Japanese sales of floppies decline from a record 47 million disks in fiscal 2002 to 12 million in fiscal 2009. Most other floppy disk manufacturers had long since pulled out of the market, and Sony itself has already ceased sales to most of its overseas markets. Certainly the writing had been on the walls for years. With the release of the iMac in 1998, Apple was the first computer maker to take the plunge and eliminate the floppy completely. Dell followed suit in 2003 when it dropped the floppy as standard equipment on one of its Dimension desktops.

CNET article.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Not dead for me yet. I have a floppy on my system right now... and a floppy on steroids (Zip drive), too.

[amenditman]

I'll miss you dear old friend.

[Tushman]

It was only a matter of time. As with all things in technology, those of us who are into computers as a hobby or through our profession know that nothing can last forever.

[zlim]

I guess I'll have to burn my 600 some floppies to CDs. That doesn't include my husband's.We have two USB floppy drives attached to my husband's two computers. My husband uses floppies way more than USB sticks, though I have been encouraging him to use his sticks more. I have quite a few blanks. I wonder what year we'll probably use our last floppy?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I still have a VHS VCR hooked up to my TV.

[amenditman]

I still have a VHS VCR hooked up to my TV.

I just bought a DVR with a built in VCR and upconvert capability.I plan to use it to burn folks VHS tapes to DVD.Starting with the custom VHS I made of all my family's old 8mm home movies including my parents' wedding in 1959.Could be useful in the next few years.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I still have 8mm movies and 35mm slides. ;)I don't have my reel-to-reel or any 8-Tracks anymore, though.

[zlim]

Ah, VCR hooked to basement tv. DVD player hooked up to kitchen tv, DVD player/VCR combo hooked up to bedroom tv and DVD recorder/VCR combo hooked up to tv room tv. :hysterical:Comcast dropped the analog signal March 30th so that was a fun filled day for me (earlier in march, actually) hooking up one set top box, and 3 smaller gizmos to the other sets, plugging in the players/recorders and configuring a new remote to go with each of the 4 tvs.I had my doubts that I would get the big box and the DVD recorder/VCR working but I tried almost every wire configuration in the book and finally hit the proper keys on the new remote so we can actually play tapes or DVDs and see them on the tv screen!

[Guest LilBambi]

We still have working:Reel-to-reel player/recorder8-track player/recorderBeta player/recorderVHS playersTechnology changes but technology also remains.We are lucky to be here during such wide changes in technology and to have new and old tech that still works.

[Guest LilBambi]

As far as floppies go we still have working 5.25, 3.5 drives and disks.We even still have working 5.25 360k drives and disks that we use with a couple working Color Compters. LOL

[V.T. Eric Layton]

WOW! 5.25s. I don't have any of those around here. I'm not that regressive.

[Guest LilBambi]

[striker]

Let me see: I do have 10 floppy disc drives in working order shelved, and 242 floppy discs. Dead? Nah!

[Guest LilBambi]

[Tushman]

We still have working:Reel-to-reel player/recorder8-track player/recorderBeta player/recorderVHS playersTechnology changes but technology also remains.We are lucky to be here during such wide changes in technology and to have new and old tech that still works.

They remain but to what extent? You can get a cheap flash drive for under $10 these days which will hold more than 10-20 times what a typical floppy disc is capable of. Besides that, they are UNRELIABLE as compared to CD-R or DVD-R or flash drives. The recording surface will deteriorate over time with the earths magnetic field and I've had several floppy discs (when I had them) go bad on me. VHS players...ok, I can see why... but floppy discs? I don't see much point to using them.

[Guest LilBambi]

Depends on whether you maintain old stock on media, or re-buy stuff in new formats. Also depends on whether you maintain old hardware that only uses that particular medium ... we basically have a museum of old equipment that still works.We enjoy technology ... old and new.I don't use floppies on my active computers, but we do have working models and media to go with them.Why? Because it's fun.

[saturnian]

Wow. The kids think I'm ancient because I still listen to cassettes and CDs, and I also have two working Sony mini-disk players and a box full of mini-disks.Not only that, I actually listen to AM and FM radio. Imagine that.Still kicking myself for ever giving away my collection of vinyl LPs, though.

Edited April 30, 2010 by saturnian

[Guest LilBambi]

Woah! Almost forgot about cassettes. We still have a working cassette recorder and my Jim has a cassette player in his truck too. We have quite a few cassettes so would be foolish not to maintain one.Oh, and we have a ton of 8-track tapes which is why we maintain one of those as well.And yeah, we not only listen to radio, we do a show (JimmyLee and Bambi Show 7010PM ET Saturdays) that is rebroadcast on satellite and LPFM stations on CNIRadio.com as well. LOL!We just love technology. That's all there is to it.

[striker]

Well, Sony may have declared the floppy disc dead, I declared Sony dead after the rootkit debacle some years ago. Nothing which bears the name Sony at the outside comes into my house ever again. Just a matter of principle.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

HA! Good point, Striker. I don't think there's anything Sony (It's ALL Baloney) in my home either.

[Webb]

40 ways we still use floppy disks

3. In the aviation industry they are still used to update firmware on ticket printers.5. I work for a national high-street based business. We still use floppies in many sites for back-ups. Believe it or not we are still running MS-DOS on most of our till systems. We get through hundreds if not into the thousands each year.7. A huge number of CNC [computer numerical control] machines for metalworking and manufacture use floppies because their instruction sets are small enough to fit on the disks. In these areas a floppy is far hardier than a CD or even a USB pen-drive.9. Believe it or not, most if not all ATM (cashpoint) programming is installed direct to the machine from a floppy disk. With all of the ATMs available in just the UK with many additional copies made to support each machine in a region... this could amount to a huge stockpile of disks hanging around for each bank and/or private ATM manufacturer ...

I have one floppy disk drive in my primary computer. It's in there because I took it out of my last computer and installed it there. When I replace the computer I'll take it out again and reinstall it. As long as BIOSs support it I'll have one.I don't have a DVD player - computers come with them, why would I need a separate one?But I have 2 VCRs. So I can tape something from cable and watch it later or on another TV. Why should I pay for DVR when VCR works fine?I have 3 (audio) cassette players. The "newest" one is a radio/CD/cassette boom box salvaged from a dumpster a few months ago. It sounds great, especially after I hooked it up to a couple of powered speakers ($10 at thrift shop).

[Tushman]

40 ways we still use floppy disks I have one floppy disk drive in my primary computer. It's in there because I took it out of my last computer and installed it there. When I replace the computer I'll take it out again and reinstall it. As long as BIOSs support it I'll have one.

It's useful days are numbered and Sony is making business decision based on common sense. Do you people think if they were popular selling items they would discontinue manufacturing them? There's a reason for it! There is such thing as supply & demand....basic common sense. The only reason to hold onto those floppies is for nostalgic reasons or for people who resist change. The thin magnetic layer on the floppy diskette is easily susceptible to corruption due to dirt; wear & tear; and no where near reliable/durable as flash drives or CD/DVD recordable media.Many modern motherboards have BIOS that support booting from USB devices. There's nothing that you cannot do with a USB drive as you can with floppies. The last computer I built for myself 2 years ago did not have a floppy and I don't miss it one bit. I think in the last 3 years, I've built maybe 1 or 2 PCs with a floppy only because the customer requested one. P.S. You gotta fix the link in your quote above. Edited May 9, 2010 by Tushman

[Guest LilBambi]

I don't miss the floppy in my current computers either. Flash and DVDRW/CDRW are all I use, mainly flash and external hard drives .... but we still have working models LOL!

[zlim]

Oh my! I don't think I've ever seen an 8" floppy; 5 1/4" was my first exposure. I did give all my 5 1/4" to a friend, who happens to be a pack rat. I'm sure he has drives to read those. I also threw out all my single sided (720kb) floppies years ago.I don't save everything. :hysterical:I also sold my external zip drive with the super disks 120MB before it developed the "click of death".

[Guest LilBambi]

Wow! It's been a very long time since I have seen 8" floppies! We used them on the CompuGraphic kiosk style system at the newspaper back in '86.We even discussed this back in 2006 here on the Forums.

[saturnian]

Well, Sony may have declared the floppy disc dead, I declared Sony dead after the rootkit debacle some years ago. Nothing which bears the name Sony at the outside comes into my house ever again. Just a matter of principle.

I quit with Sony after my experiences with their mini-disks and mini-disk players. But I have to admit, they make quality products. My Sony mini-disk players have lasted a long time, and the sound quality on those mini-disks is better than any compressed-formatted music I've used since. I'm no expert in this area, but my ears tell me that Sony's ATRAC format sounded much better than .mp3 format. Too bad I was never able to find any software to work with those ATRAC files in Linux.

[striker]

Maybe this helps a bit:http://www.ffmpeg.org/Scroll down to September 23, 2009, the link in there leads you to https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/doku.php(the link leads to Germany but the site contents are in english)

[saturnian]

Thanks, strider! I think that I was aware of this project, or something similar, a few years back, but at the time they hadn't managed to get very far with it. Looks like considerable progress has been made!I'll bookmark this stuff and take a closer look real soon, I hope. There's a lot to it, when you look into it.Thanks again! It just so happens that I have one of my Sony mini-disk players running right at this moment! Plugged into a pair of computer speakers...