3.5-Inch Floppy: Essential but Already Primitive
When the computer industry talks about killing the 3.5-inch floppy disk, personal computer users like George Velez get upset.
“I’d be handicapped,” says the ticket-office manager at Circle Line Cruises, who uses disks for storing memos and letters and even takes them home to work on in the comfort of his Manhattan apartment.
Computer makers’ hopes to phase out the timeworn diskette are running head-on into folks like Velez.
Never mind that the 1.44-megabyte medium is too puny to store many new computer games and bulky data files. It isn’t even that floppy. And external storage devices such as Iomega’s Zip drive sport many times the capacity.
In the latest insult, the medium gets the boot from Apple--its new computer, the iMac, lacks a floppy drive.
Despite a growing push to phase out the computer staple, most users still swear by the inexpensive, convenient method for storing and exchanging files with friends and co-workers. Emerging alternatives, such as recordable CD-ROMs, are currently too expensive for most consumers.
A staggering 2.3 billion diskettes were sold worldwide last year, according to Magnetic Media Information Services, a Tokyo-based research firm. While that number has been steadily dropping to well under 2 billion this year partly due to the growing use of CD-ROMs to distribute software, experts say it’s a slow fade.
Such persistent loyalty is freezing the computer world in a time warp. Even as new machines sport drives for running high-capacity digital versatile disks--sort of souped-up CD-ROMs that hold the equivalent of several full-length movies--PCs continue to include built-in floppy drives. Floppies are still handy for backing up files against computer crashes, which can wipe out information stored on the hard drive.
The more gradual approach clashes with Apple’s radical shift in the Macintosh it started selling this month. And some critics say the futuristic iMac--sporting a built-in monitor and an eye-catching translucent design--may be a bit ahead of its time, at least in this regard.
Apple, arguing that the 3.5-inch floppy is a dying medium, says most iMac buyers will add external drives or transfer files via e-mail.
But others say the snub to floppies may make it tough for Steve Jobs, Apple’s interim chief executive, to reach beyond its main customers--graphics and publishing professionals--to those who mainly do simple word processing. An add-on drive could raise the cost of the $1,300 machine by $90.
“We can say Mr. Jobs is not up to speed on users’ convenience when it comes to storage,” said James Porter, president of Disk/Trend Inc., a market research firm based in Mountain View that specializes in the disk-drive industry.
It won’t be the first time Jobs has shown a daring attitude toward storage. The original Macintosh computer he introduced didn’t include a hard-disk drive. It later was added. After he was ousted by Apple, Jobs developed the Next computer with an unusual optical-storage drive. The computer fizzled.
Still, Apple could be pointing to a future without floppies.
Iomega Corp., Imation Corp. and Sony Corp. all are vying to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk, offering high-capacity alternatives.
“I’m very bullish on the long-term market for removable data storage,” said Jeff Ash, vice president of marketing at Fuji Photo Film USA Inc., which created 200-megabyte disks for a new Sony external drive.
“I would concur that the life span of the 1.44-megabyte drive probably doesn’t meet the needs of a lot of the users out there today.”
And Dutch giant Philips Electronics NV and others are pushing recordable compact discs as a floppy replacement. Recordable CDs, with a massive 650 megabytes of data storage, cost less than $1 each. And, though the drives cost a pricey $350, they are expected to steadily cheapen.
