40 Uses For Floppy Disks

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Floppy disks: headed for the museum, or treasured home for your data? When Sony said this week it was halting the production of floppy disks, the Magazine set out to discover who still buys and uses this anachronistic computer storage medium.

More than 1,000 readers e-mailed in response to the Magazine's request to explain their attachment to the once universally popular 3.5" diskettes. Many pointed out floppies are needed to access even newer computers' deepest innards - their Bios. (A surprising number also enjoyed pointing out the South African term for floppies - stiffies - though let's not dwell too long on that.)

Here are 40 explanations for why floppy disks are still needed:

1. I regularly buy floppy disks. I own a pub with a retro theme and I use them as beer mats.

Shaun Garrod, Ashby de la Soul

2. I am an artist from London and I use floppy disks to produce my paintings. I tile them up as canvases. The personal information on each disk is forever locked under the paint, but the labels are left as a clue. I use the circular hubs on the reverse for eyes!

Nick Gentry, London

3. In the aviation industry they are still used to update firmware on ticket printers.

Dre, Germany

4. Not as much a user as an owner of a great many floppies, I was planning to tile the roof of my shed with them (using the two existing corner holes to take the nails) until my wife forbade it.

Erik Ga Bean, Stevenage, England

5. I work for a national high-street based business. We still use floppies in many sites for back-ups. Believe it or not we are still running MS-DOS on most of our till systems. We get through hundreds if not into the thousands each year.

Matt Sparks, Birmingham

6. Have you seen the cost of clays for skeet shooting? Pull!

Paul Taylor, St.Helens England


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