*POLL* Is your floppy dead?

dragontales · Post by **dragontales** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 11:12 am

I think it would be safe to assume that most users here only viewed the "most silent component" and "must have" comments as a way to inject some humor into the poll. Obviously my assumption was incorrect because we have some folks here (m0000000002) that see things literally. I apologize (yet again) if you did not see the light-heartedness of the poll.

Oh yea, keep attacking my intelligence indirectly please. Keep it coming. It's really nice of you.

sensei · Post by **sensei** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:49 pm

I actually forgot to put it in my new case... it's been at least a half year, and I haven't noticed it was missing untill this moment...

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:55 pm

peteamer wrote:I for one had not seen it and I offer my profuse apologies for my inability to read 'between the lines'...

I don't think what I said requires reading between the lines, nor was I asking for some kind of obscure interpretation. The options in the poll are rather clearly stated.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 1:09 pm

dragontales wrote:Oh yea, keep attacking my intelligence indirectly please. Keep it coming. It's really nice of you.

I think if you read my poll, you will see that I suggested that either:

A. The pollster is not knowledgeable about the subject matter.

B. The pollster has an ax to grind and can manipulate the results by limiting the choices.

I never suggested anything about your intelligence.

And since you later admitted that you hate floppies and do have an ax to grind ("I confess that I do have a [sic] ax to grind because I hate any and all floppies."), then any suggestion that you are in any way lacking in intelligence is clearly unfounded.

Regarding your humor, that is an open question. Several other people felt obligated to offer up some reasons why they still use floppies, so it was taken somewhat seriously by a few besides me.

BTW, how do you know my posts are to be taken literally? Maybe you are the one with no sense of humor.

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 4:39 pm

Ah, you didn't read his post properly!

m0002a wrote:Why is it that people who make up multiple choice polls, never list the correct answer as one of the choices?

A. The pollster is not knowledgeable about the subject matter.

B. The pollster has an ax to grind and can manipulate the results by limiting the choices.

The correct answer was, of course, C...
(Someone suggest a <tone type="humorous"> tag to the W3C!)

dragontales · Post by **dragontales** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 10:48 pm

m000000002

I suggest you go back and read the reason why I said I have an ax to grind.

" I must confess that I do have a ax to grind because I hate any and all floppies. I hate them with passion because no matter what I try, I cannot seem to keep it silent without maintaining low temperatures."

Now do you seriously think I was being serious? Was this a real confession? Please buy a clue. Would someone please donate one to him for the love of God.

I'm done with you. If you don't like it, then leave this thread. I'm not going to respond to you anymore. SPAMMER.

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 11:22 pm

I have an external USB floppy drive from Sony. Right now, it's disconnected and waiting for the next time I'll need it. That way, it's dead silent, doesn't have any impact on airflow and is available fast if I need it. So far, it was only used to install the SATA driver during Windows XP setup... I guess it's the same thing for most of the users here...

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 9:28 am

OK girls.

That's enough of the bullshit. Keep this post on topic or I'll consign the entire thing to the SPCR trash can.

W(hy)TF do you guys always have to argue about such petty stuff? At least use the PMs and take it off the boards so the rest of us don't have to put up with it.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 11:30 am

sata install, fresh with windows xp pro sp2 corporate edition for time warner.

NEEDS A FLOPPY

my friend f'd up his bios.

No floppy on his machine! he's too l33t for that.

Has to wait 2 days to get a floppy drive before using his computer.

Usb is a joke, so is cd rw a joke as well if your computer is near dead or cant use a hd. some will say, edit your windows install disk with sata drivers, yeah, thats assuming you already installed before, made a copy of xp, etc etc...

also, when non computer geeks come over who are in college, many of them bring disks. Hey, you have a dual core systm with 2 gigs of ram and a FIOS connection but you cant read my 10KB 2 page document!

all things that have happened in the past 3 months. if no floppy no pride

No floppy no pride, hey hey hey, I remember, when I was a boy, the amiga mon showed me his compy, yeah, he showed me his 3 and a half, and tthen i say, no flopy no pride, oh yeah. oh oh, no flop-py no pride.

PositiveSpin · Post by **PositiveSpin** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 12:35 pm

I have installed a floppy a couple of times recently, both times so I could use an "F6" floppy - Windows XP won't read RAID drivers off a CD (no, I cannot be bothered slip-streaming them into an XP install, especially when they are being installed for testing/verification). However, any machine I build that isn't using RAID for the system drive probably doesn't get a floppy.

It's annoying that RAID drivers for the system drive must be read from a floppy, but not worth sweating over - I'd rather MS added support for reading the drivers off a CD, but...

Anyway, this is one situation where neither a USB key nor a CD-RW will fill the bill. Most other circumstances (eg: booting to fix a BIOS, or to ghost a drive) can use a USB key or bootable CD. In fact, ASUS have done a neat job of allowing BIOS flashing to be done using a CD that isn't even bootable (their dual BIOS will happily read a replacement BIOS off the root directory of any optical media that your drive supports)

If I must, I can use a floppy sitting on a cardboard box beside the open PC case (you know what I mean), but sometimes it's just simpler to install it in the case - never know when you might need to reinstall, or to run a repair using the XP CD. After all, a floppy drive costs a neglible amount.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 12:43 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:No floppy on his machine! he's too l33t for that.

The truly l33t would have a 2nd computer on hand to debug the 1st computer

.

One thing that's running through my mind right now is this: How many people have bought laptops recently. How many of those who bought laptops got a floppy drive with them? Assuming you got a floppy, what kind was it?

Anyways, since this thread is discussing floppies, I'll link to my old thread that I posted a year ago. Clearly, there are people in this thread who may have a vested interest in what I started there, particularly if you're interested dropping the floppy completely.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 2:57 pm

I wish i could get a beautiful screened laptop with lightweight and centrino with a floppy. im not talking "sorta lightweight" but really lightweight. that includes NOT having a usb floppy (20 bux I know, but more cords and pieces to pack up and unpack)

yes indeed he is lacking in supposed l33tness. he should have 2-3 comps in his house at all times and a large section of old equipment.

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:12 am

Wow, someone decided to take himself way too seriously, here. Who complains over the poll options in a thread like this?

On the original topic, I built my recent system without a floppy, figuring that a floppy was a vestigal component and had no place in the modern world. A month after building it, I had needed a floppy drive at two different times, so I just broke down and bought one - one of those Mitsumi drives with all of the flash card readers built in, so I could feel a little bit geeky while installing this ancient component that should have been rendered useless years ago.

It's a little sad that we still rely on such a device when USB drives are so far superior in every way. I think we should force manufacturers who require floppy disks (like Microsoft for SATA drivers) to pay a fine. After we've cured the manufacturers of this disease, we can force anyone who buys a floppy disk to pay an exorbitant tax. Only then can we do away with this evil device altogether

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:17 am

Incidentally, I'm extremely upset that one of the poll options was not:

"Built new system without floppy drive, discovered floppy drive was necessary, bought floppy drive with card readers to make it more useful."

God. What kind of lousy, biased poll is this?

peteamer · Post by **peteamer** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:23 am

POLL Is your floppy dead?

How many people still install and use a floppy in their SilentPC?

Need a floppy very occasionally