Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Floppies in the news

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (notice, no serial comma) is abandoning its use of the floppy disk. From Japan Today:

The push to end the use of floppy disks within government agencies stems, of course, from two major problems. The first is that a physical media requirement reduces the ability to submit and share data online, hampering operational efficiency and complicating the process of revising or updating the information. Second, it’s extremely difficult to even find floppy disks for sale anymore, as they’ve essentially disappeared from the consumer market.
“Essentially disappeared”? Tell that to Tom Persky, whose floppydisk.com is still selling 3.5″, 5.25″, and 8″ disks. Here, from Euronews, is a look at Perksy and his business. And from Wired, an explanation of “Why the Floppy Disk Just Won’t Die.”

A related post
Utnapishtim’s word-processor (An 8″ Displaywriter disk)

comments: 2

Richard Abbott said...

Wow, I neither seen nor heard of a floppy disk for years! I had no idea some hardy soul was still selling them. Time was when 1.44 MB seemed a lot of data, but you'd struggle to get a single photo from your camera on it now

Michael Leddy said...

That’s a vivid example of how the need for storage has changed.

I remember when 128K was a lot of RAM on a computer. (No mere 64K!)