FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for October 21, 2009

…What? Either I missed a really low-brow joke, or I forgot that this is before flash drives apparently.

This was a lot funnier back in the day when floppies were actually relevant. I now enjoy it for a totally different reason.

Thankfully we have moved beyond floppy disks. Flash drives are much more convenient and hold much more data. I still run into the occasional person who still puts everything onto a cd, or worse a zip drive.

I remember the iMacs, those computer monitors that came in many wonderful colors. Aw, good times, great memories.

I’m a PC, and sometimes I wonder what treasures are hidden in my pile of unreadable 5-1/4-inch floppies. You know, the ones that would actually bend?

i can smell sarcasm in peter’s tone.

sounds like a great pick up line.

I’m up for anything that slams Apple. I even cheer when the DroidDoes commercials come on.

…and if you want to know something really scary, the airplane that I fly (designed in 2001, built in 2005) actually uses a 3.5” floppy drive to update its navigational database.

I still have a bunch of floppies with all sorts of small programs on them - had to buy a separate USB floppy drive for them, but just hate to give them up. Floppy drives disappeared, and then parallel ports went away, poor things - there’s no pity in the technical world. Also had to buy a parallel to USB adapter in order to keep my IBM Network printer. Now my floppy drive sits next to my 1TB external HD. “Then and now”.

(This is starting to read like a JAD comment - I’ll quit now.)

“I will crash the program you use in school; and any files you’ve saved from it, will be incompatible with any other computer!”

-True story

I still have (and use) my iMac. I have a rarely used matching usb floppy drive that sits in a box beneath the desk. I almost forgot about floppy disks.

Well, there you have the difference between man and machine. A computer starts off with a floppy disc, and as time goes by you end up with a hard drive. Man starts off with a hard drive, and as time goes by, it turns into a floppy disc.

oh WOW… I didn’t use mac until floppy drives were long gone… I never actually used them on my windows xp before that… say, what happened to “iFruit”? I liked them exxagerating the “fun” of mac with a fruit shaped computer.

It looks like a football helmet from a cubist phase.

It took me long enough, but I’ve finally purchased my own archives of 3.5” floppies into obsolescence. My two (2) laptops have USB ports, and I have several flash drives (plus USB-compatible hard drives), and a CD/DVD burner, but no place for non-floppy floppies.

As soneone once warned me, once you get on this particular treadmill you don’t dare step off.

I remember back when the first 5.25" floppy disks came out, and we were amazed at how quick they were and how much data they held – they were a huge step up from storing data on cassette tapes. There’s been an advance or two since then.

Nowadays, Macs don’t even have CD drives!

Nope, now no more usb drives, only usb-c…

Still won’t buy Apple.