When I bought my most recent computer (just over a year ago), WoC said they didn't install a floppy drive as standard any more, but offered to put one in for an extra £4. I decided it wasn't worth it, and haven't regretted the decision yet.
Given the same decision a year or two earlier I thought "fuck it, it's only 4 quid". Since then I think I *have* used it a couple of times, as I have some very old PC games on floppy still. Mostly I just boggle at the fact it always tries to read the floppy drive when shutting down, and I've no idea why!
I only use floppy drives now on my BBC Micro, which, in turn, I only use for its Hybrid Music System, either for listening to the music (which I'd have sampled digitally and turned into a CD by now if not for this problem (http://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/86714.html?thread=371898#t371898), or for using my Music 4000 keyboard, which is the only thing stopping me forgetting altogether how to play the piano or read sheet music).
I have a stack of games here, too. I just never play them.
It's funny. I used to play X*L*C*R (http://www.michael-grant.me.uk/xlcr.html) (a game I wrote) lots when I first got my Master (it was Heriot-Watt University's last eight-bit machine, and I intercepted it on the way to the skip in 1998), and when I first got a decent computer of my own in 2000, I had to deinstall the Tetris which came built into Emacs, as I otherwise just wasted far too much time playing it; but now I feel no compulsion to play games at all. The operating system I'm currently using (Fedora 8 Linux) comes with a bunch of simple games, but I've never played them even once.
I have quite a few floppies; I should go through them and take images of them, and discard those that don't work any more (quite possibly the majority by now).
The household FreeBSD server is a Compaq AP400 Professional Workstation, i.e. a workstation built with server components (ECC RAM and all). It doesn't boot from CD, so reinstallation requires finding a floppy and installing bootables on it.
Why the "only" in "I only have computers that don't even have a space for a floppy disk drive"? I do have some computers with no space for a floppy drive, but also have others that have either space or drive.
I have floppy drives with capacities all the way down to 80KBytes.
D'oh! Only just noticed the "only" in the "I only have computers..." option. Well, I do have some computers with no space for a floppy drive, just as I have some with spaces and some with drives.
I also have a piano with a floppy drive, which is why I occasionally use diskettes for data storage. Very, very rarely I'll use one for work, but thankfully USB flash drives are a lot more accepted in customer environments now than they were five years ago.
I think I'd count those in the 720/800 and 1440/1600 categories, as they are the same disks more efficiently used rather than actually a different medium in any way.
I didn't say never for using a floppy, because I have done in the past. Although I've not used a floppy for storing documents in at least a decade, and I don't think I've had to boot a machine from floppy in at least 5 years.
I haven't used a floppy for a while, and when I did it was on a computer that had no floppy drive (the XP CD I had doesn't have SATA drivers built in, and will only look for additional drivers on a floppy). I did have a spare drive, but that computer's power supply didn't have a connector for it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/armb/284977764/
Before that, something to do with resizing partitions on a Windows formatted disk to make room for a Linux install, IIRC (on a computer that had a drive).
I do still have an Amiga in a cupboard, and if I ever do anything with it that might involve floppies (it has a hard drive, but no network card).
Last time I used a floppy was IIRC a downloadable image with a linux kernel and just enough userland to resize ext* filesystems. I'm sure an install or live CD would be easier these days.
HP Beast is old enough to have a floppy drive still. It had some use when I was transferring things from old disks I had lying around, and it occasionally gets used for things like memtest86.
At work none of the Dells have disk drives built in but we have a solitary USB one. We also have a job lot of floppies our software used to fit on, before the Enterprise Bloat occurred... ;)
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 11:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 02:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 08:52 am (UTC)The Windows FastFind indexing thing (or its successor)
Your antivirus.
Lots of peeps used to switch fastfind off, coz it's crap.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:18 pm (UTC)It's funny. I used to play X*L*C*R (http://www.michael-grant.me.uk/xlcr.html) (a game I wrote) lots when I first got my Master (it was Heriot-Watt University's last eight-bit machine, and I intercepted it on the way to the skip in 1998), and when I first got a decent computer of my own in 2000, I had to deinstall the Tetris which came built into Emacs, as I otherwise just wasted far too much time playing it; but now I feel no compulsion to play games at all. The operating system I'm currently using (Fedora 8 Linux) comes with a bunch of simple games, but I've never played them even once.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 08:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:12 pm (UTC)The House contains some 3-400 floppy disks which I "must check out one day to see if there's anything important on them". Hah, yeah, right.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:11 pm (UTC)3" : an Amstrad CPC 6128
3.5" : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/orlith/ and others
5.25" : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/carenath/
8" : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/faranth/
I also have a spare 8" drive in the junk pile.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:34 pm (UTC)I don't play it much because of the hassles with UK/US TV standards. But it still works :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 03:16 pm (UTC)I have floppy drives with capacities all the way down to 80KBytes.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 04:37 pm (UTC)I also have a piano with a floppy drive, which is why I occasionally use diskettes for data storage. Very, very rarely I'll use one for work, but thankfully USB flash drives are a lot more accepted in customer environments now than they were five years ago.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 04:48 pm (UTC)And about 2,500 of the damn things that are just taunting me, that I really should image into .ADFs while they're still readable.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 08:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 09:00 am (UTC)I did have a spare drive, but that computer's power supply didn't have a connector for it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/armb/284977764/
Before that, something to do with resizing partitions on a Windows formatted disk to make room for a Linux install, IIRC (on a computer that had a drive).
I do still have an Amiga in a cupboard, and if I ever do anything with it that might involve floppies (it has a hard drive, but no network card).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 04:43 pm (UTC)At work none of the Dells have disk drives built in but we have a solitary USB one. We also have a job lot of floppies our software used to fit on, before the Enterprise Bloat occurred... ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 07:40 pm (UTC)