Just the other day, Sony announced that they would be ending domestic (Japanese) sales of 3.5 inch “floppy” disks. The latest and most efficient versions of this medium, the High Density disk, would hold 1.44 megabytes of data. And they’re very, very slow to transfer data. Now, Sony holds 70% of the market share for 1.44 MB floppies in Japan, so this is pretty much the death knell for this ancient and venerable storage medium. It will take a little longer for this to roll out into the United States, as we hang on to our computer hardware longer than the Japanese, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Apple abandoned this medium several years ago, and as of last fiscal year, Dell no longer provided them as standard options on it’s commercial-grade computers. (Source: CNET – Sony delivers floppy disk’s last rites )
Introduced in 1987, the 3.5″ floppy had a twenty three year lifespan as a standard. And that’s a pretty darn good run. The 5.25 floppy, it’s immediate predecessor wwas introduced by Apple around 1978, and only lasted nine years. The 8″ floppy, used before that, only lasted seven years.
Today’s preferred portable media is the “memory stick.” Also called a “thumb drive” or “jump drive,” 512 MB versions can be had for under a dollar, for the careful shopper. For a dollar, you can buy a media stick that will hold three hundred and fifty five floppy disks. Or, if you’ve got a little more money to spend, you can get an 8 GIGAbit drive for about $24.00. It will hold the same amount of data as FIVE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED and FIFTY FIVE floppies. For $24.00. I remember being shocked when the price of floppies dropped below a $20.00 for a pack of ten.
SO – teaching learners to use floppy disks or even CDs/DVDs is probably not a good way to spend the tiny amount of time we have for technology training. I would be very surprised to discover a computer in use with a floppy drive in another five years.