the NHS is the biggest user of microsoft porducts in the country. and i guess it stands to reason that we have more PC's than any organisation too. i can tell you that at least in our patch that we are no where ready to stop using floppy disks. data sticks are prevelent with some folk, but put it simply about 5% of the PCs we use have the capability to copy on to CDs, and only a few of the new laptops can copy to DVD. If fact when we order laptops, we have to ask for an external floppy disk drive.
our 'stores' suppliers wont stop suppling them for a very long time, in fact we can still buy audio cassettes and VHS tapes through them.
None of my home PCs have floppies, and they haven't for many years now. If I ever need a floppy, I usually end up having to go out to the shops for one as I can never find one around the house.
With live Linux distros on CD (Knoppix, etc), the whole concept of needing a boot floppy to rescue a system is now hideously obsolete.
What took the rest of you so long? I stopped using 3.5" floppy disks when the iMac came out.
Must be cool to be a minority.
Same goes for LINUX.
I tried the latest UBUNTU LAMP distro - couldn't get it to act as webserver out of the box as advertised. Gave up after many hours of reading badly written help files and forums who's predominant answer to ANY question is RTFM. So far I have found the LINUX community to be unhelpful and unfriendly. In the words of the song "elitist, geeky, schmucks."
I gave up and installed 2003 server. It took 45 minutes start to finish and works beautifully- with PHP & MySQL.
I will keep going back to LINUX it does get better everytime, the UBUNTU desktop is pretty good.
And the UI is still awful. Having to follow nested menus from the start menu is no way to administer a network.
Just create a single custom MMC with the required snap-ins, pin that to the Start menu and it's job done. For anything that MMC can't do, I usually just use a command line.
My latest PC came without a floppy and I was quite shocked... I use floppy`s still most weeks, keep one in the drive for when working on a game etc etc as it`s nice to know any changes are backed up on not just the hard drive. You can fit 3 or 4 zipped SAM Coupe .dsk images and an Amiga .adf image onto a floppy :D
Comments
Bye bye Mr Data I never used you but I'm bound to wish I bought a couple of boxes in 5 years time.
Soon it will be dropped from Viking and Oyez then where will we be when we want to recover that crashed hard disk?
Of course I won't ever miss having to install MS Office from 20+ floppies on a dozen standalone machines. Especially as disk 11 had a dodgy sector.
our 'stores' suppliers wont stop suppling them for a very long time, in fact we can still buy audio cassettes and VHS tapes through them.
so if you need some ploppy disks........ ;)
With live Linux distros on CD (Knoppix, etc), the whole concept of needing a boot floppy to rescue a system is now hideously obsolete.
For data transfer I use the network or CD/DVDs.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Double sided double density?
Must be cool to be a minority.
Same goes for LINUX.
I tried the latest UBUNTU LAMP distro - couldn't get it to act as webserver out of the box as advertised. Gave up after many hours of reading badly written help files and forums who's predominant answer to ANY question is RTFM. So far I have found the LINUX community to be unhelpful and unfriendly. In the words of the song "elitist, geeky, schmucks."
I gave up and installed 2003 server. It took 45 minutes start to finish and works beautifully- with PHP & MySQL.
I will keep going back to LINUX it does get better everytime, the UBUNTU desktop is pretty good.
Every day since I got my PlusD :)
they are DS/HD
Too modern!
MF2DD
not MF2HD
For PlusD anyway.
and
sony 2DD
among others