The Floppy is Dead! Eh... Who Cares?

From v3.co.uk:

Sony has announced that it will halt sales of all 3.5 inch floppies in Japan by March 2011. Japan is one of the few countries where the storage medium is still available from Sony.

The move will come nearly 30 years after Sony produced its first line of 3.5in floppy disks. Most global shipments had already been halted, but the company had continued to offer the disks in Japan where the format had a larger user base.

I haven't used a floppy disk in almost twelve years. The closest I've come was when I used to use a Zip Drive (remember those?) to transfer files around. I actually outgrew floppy disks in college when I had my comic strip, Tales from the Dorm Side, in the college newspaper. Each disk would only hold one strip, and that was if it was a compressed JPEG. It quickly became a headache to turn in multiple disks that editors had a bad habit of misplacing. Digital delivery over the network or via e-mail soon became my delivery method of choice.

In fact, the very first computer I ever purchased, a "Yosemite" Mac G3 didn't even have an option to add one. This was around the time that Apple released the original iMac sans floppy drive, which caused quite a disturbance in the force at the time.

And frankly, I'm surprised that Japan - which in my mind, at least, is technologically more advanced than the US - was still using them.

I'll always love the sound that the 3.5 inch floppy made when it was loading or copying, though. It takes me back to my days of playing SimCity and F-19 Strike Eagle (and Leisure Suit Larry, to be honest) in high school. Farewell old floppy friend. I can't say you'll be missed.