«

Hello.

I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.

I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
CD?

Thanks

John

You don't really *need* it, as you can do most things with a bootable CD
these days. However, it can be more convenient in some respects, and only
costs like $10 (US).


...
"John" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hello.
>
> I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
> waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.
>
> I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
> problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
> CD?
>
> Thanks
>
> John
>
>

John wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
> waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.
>
> I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
> problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
> CD?
>
> Thanks
>
> John
>
>
I would always have said "no" because I had not used a floppy drive for
probably two or three years, except on very old computers which do not
allow booting from CD.

Just yesterday though I purchased a small business accounting program
(Australian), which for some unknown reason required a floppy with an
unlocking code before I could use all the features. Utterly ridiculous
in this day and age, but there you go!

The cost of a floppy drive is trivial, so I guess it does not hurt to
install one, even though it will be very rarely used.

--
Cheers
Oldus Fartus

"Oldus Fartus" <> wrote in message
news:brdtl2$2g5$...
> John wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
> > waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.
> >
> > I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
> > problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
> > CD?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> I would always have said "no" because I had not used a floppy drive for
> probably two or three years, except on very old computers which do not
> allow booting from CD.
>
> Just yesterday though I purchased a small business accounting program
> (Australian), which for some unknown reason required a floppy with an
> unlocking code before I could use all the features. Utterly ridiculous
> in this day and age, but there you go!
>
> The cost of a floppy drive is trivial, so I guess it does not hurt to
> install one, even though it will be very rarely used.

At the very least, it makes for a nice dust collection device.

John wrote:
>
> I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
> problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
> CD?

I'd get one.





--
http://www.bootdisk.com/

Oldus Fartus wrote:
>
> John wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
> > waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.
> >
> > I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
> > problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
> > CD?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> I would always have said "no" because I had not used a floppy drive for
> probably two or three years, except on very old computers which do not
> allow booting from CD.
>
> Just yesterday though I purchased a small business accounting program
> (Australian), which for some unknown reason required a floppy with an
> unlocking code before I could use all the features. Utterly ridiculous
> in this day and age, but there you go!
>
> The cost of a floppy drive is trivial, so I guess it does not hurt to
> install one, even though it will be very rarely used.

I use a 1.44M floppy to keep a record of my stock portfolio. Of course
one couldn't do that using Excel. I use SuperCalc5, and the complete
portfolio weekly updates for a year, (52 spreadsheets), fit on one floppy.
There are a total of 48 line items with 13 columns each, plus a 15 line
summary. 52 weeks fit on one floppy including summaries for the past five
years and a weekly line graph of total portfolio value. Floppies aren't too
small--our programs and data files have just grown too big.

It's also handy to have a floppy to boot into DOS or Linux to unravel file
problems when Windows won't boot. I realize that you can do most of this
with a CD, but you'll meet a lot of computers that can't boot from CDs.
(I do have some basic Linux and DOS programs on a bootable CD, but it's
easier to juggle files on a floppy to make specialized boot disks.)

My first floppies were 5 1/4" single sided, single density holding all of
110K, so I'm happy with 1.44M. Incidently they cost about $5 each. I'm
just sorry that AOL quit sending out free floppies that could be formatted.

For a while, I'll keep my floppy drives! Both A: and B:

Virg Wall
--
A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds,........
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Microsoft programmer's manual.)

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 01:59:14 +0000, John <> wrote:

>Hello.
>
>I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
>waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.
>
>I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
>problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
>CD?
>
>Thanks
>
>John
>

Floppies are kind of comforting to have.

I have many complaints about CDs - have to format them; they are
fragile; they are exposed to dust fingerprints chocolate; you have to
fiddle with stupid cases.

All in all, the CD is just a big old 5.25 floppy with all the
drawbacks of 1982 technology.

Wish someone would come along with a standard the encloses the CD like
when they moved from 5.25 to 3.5. Now there's something I can throw
onto the desk and not worrry about.

Roy - Carpe Noctem

X-No-Archive: yes

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 04:40:41 GMT, V W Wall <>
wrote:

>portfolio weekly updates for a year, (52 spreadsheets), fit on one floppy.

But floppies are so unreliable - literally it goes bad by the time you
go over to your neighbor to help out. In such cases I take at least
three identical floppies

--
Sandy Archer
Reply to newsgroups only

John wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I am putting together a new win xp system very shortly. I'm just
> waiting for a graphics card and CDRW to arrive for it.
>
> I just wondered if I really need to have a 3.5" drive? Would I have
> problems if I didn't have one installed, or could I do everything from
> CD?
>
> Thanks
>
> John

Basically if your system is USB bootable...there is no need for one
anymore...unless you use DOS, and unless you blah blah blah...many other
reasons. You have yours...think about it for your purposes.

--
Night_Seer

Ardent wrote:

> X-No-Archive: yes
>
> On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 04:40:41 GMT, V W Wall <>
> wrote:
>
>
>>portfolio weekly updates for a year, (52 spreadsheets), fit on one floppy.
>
>
> But floppies are so unreliable - literally it goes bad by the time you
> go over to your neighbor to help out. In such cases I take at least
> three identical floppies
>

Nonsense. If you look after them, store them properly and use known
good disks, then they are reliable. If you have to make three copies
of something to make sure you get one good one, then I would suggest
either your drive or your disks are faulty.

It hasn't been a reliability problem which has caused people to stop
using them, but a lack of capacity in the media. 1.44 meg just is
nowhere big enough these days for many people. (There are exceptions
of course, as Virg has said - he has a need for them, and it suits his
purposes.)

--
Cheers
Oldus Fartus