Sony recently announced that they’d halt production of the 3.5″ floppy discs.  Sony was the last remaining “large” manufacturer of floppy discs.  This blog entry is about the reaction of myself and my Dad to the news.

I gave up on floppy discs over a decade ago. They just didn’t hold enough data.  I moved on to Iomega Zip drives…they held 100 MB of data at the time.  In a few years, the Zip drives weren’t enough.  In 1999, my wife and I bought our first CD burner. Wow, that was so exciting.

Over the years I’ve gathered thousands of files for my various projects and 3D-Art materials.

Eventually I needed more storage space for “backups,” etc.  I bought my first DVD burner, sometime around 2004.  In 2005, I starting building my PC’s without floppy drives.  Now I want removable media that provides more storage space.  I’m thinking of BluRay drives for computers.

In contrast, my 82-year-old Dad continues to prefer his floppy discs for portable storage.

My Dad says the 3.5″ floppy is the perfect size to fit into his shirt pocket. The floppy disc provides its own protection in the form of its case.  My Dad doesn’t like USB Thumb drives because they hold too much data.  He says the mini-DVD discs might almost be a substitute for his beloved floppy discs. But they don’t have their own built-in protective case. (Dad doesn’t realize that DVD discs are more complicated than using floppies!)

In recent years, I’ve decided to move to Macintosh computers to handle my everyday projects.

I keep PC’s around, partially because my Dad still uses PC’s. Sometimes he needs my help.

A year ago, Dad bought a Systemax “Beast” quad-core PC for himself, my brother and me.

He wouldn’t use the Beast PC much because it didn’t come with a built-in floppy drive.

We finally ordered my Dad a device that had both a floppy drive and SD card reader. Then he started using the Beast PC.  I’d like to persuade my Dad to get a Macintosh computer.

His first reaction is that the Macintosh computers don’t have built-in floppy drives.

To summarize, I reacted positively when Sony announced Last Rites for the Floppy Drive.

My Dad, however, said: “It’s like we have to have progress for progresses’s sake, in spit of the needs of people who use things….”  I won’t miss floppy discs…I threw away my floppy drives years ago.  However, my Dad will continue to bemoan their loss, until he finds something almost as good.

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