Is the Floppy Disk Finally Dead?
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A big U.K. retail chain drops the 3.5-inch disk for good. How long until the United States follows? Plus: Tell us about your bizarre ringtones. In Gadget Lab.
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LONDON -- PC World, Britain's largest chain of computer superstores, will say goodbye to floppy disks once the current stash is gone.
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By Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.  Sep. 6--Dave Andrews knew something was horribly wrong when he couldn't open the digital-photo files on his computer. All those pictures of his kids were suddenly inaccessible, the Rosemount man recalls.
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The holidays are done at last. Time to get back to normal. Well, perhaps not entirely normal. Our computers, after all, are normally in a state of chaos, cluttered with once-cherished files that we can't even find anymore.
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Windows? Linux? Mac OS? One day it won't matter.
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Computer failure points to the challenge of aging equipment.
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When I got back from Europe my black MacBook wouldn't boot, it just sat there with a disk icon and a flashing question mark. So I made an appointment at the Apple store in Emeryville to have it looked at. When I got there, there was no wait, they were calling my name. The repair guy opened the Mac, took out the disk, went into the back room, and came back saying the disk was bad, I'd need a new one. How much? $160. How large? 80GB. I've been buying disks lately, I bought a 500GB disk for $150 a few weeks ago, and just bought a 1TB disk for $280. So I knew that $160 for 80GB, even in a portable form factor, was probably a ripoff, but I figured here I am now, I can get the computer working, so I said OK and shrugged it off. The new disk went in, I signed a form, and was about to leave and asked for the old disk and the clerk said it was his not mine. They were going to send it back to the manufacturer. I figured it would be refurbished and sold cheap to someone in a third world country. Little did I suspect.  He got his supervisor. She insisted that the drive belonged to Apple, even though I had paid an inflated price to buy a new one. She showed me the language on the reverse side of the form I signed. It was even worse than she had said. There was no guarantee that the drive they had just put in my Mac was new! It might have been someone else's defective drive. I said it was outrageous. I grabbed a copy of the agreement and left.  I scanned the agreement, highlighting section 4, the part the store manager cited. Now there are a lot of speeches I could give. Here are a few. 1. I buy Macs knowing they're more expensive, but I expect to be treated better. I drive a BMW for the same reason. Luckily there's Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, et al to keep BMW customer service in top form (which it has been so far, I'm on my fourth BMW). I always say this -- Apple service is outstanding when you buy something, but it falls down, often, when you need it fixed. Not always, but often. 2. There are consumer protection laws that require auto repair shops to offer you the old parts. Why doesn't that apply to computer repairs? Or maybe it does. 3. Apple prices are ripoffs, but this is an unusually heinous ripoff. To charge such inflated prices for used parts, they should have some shame. 4. They don't seem to have any fallback when there's a dissatisfied customer. As an Apple shareholder, I think it would work better if store personnel felt they were guardians of the company's reputation. Consider for a moment that you are ripping off the customer. What tools can you offer the sales person to make good with the customer? Could you let the customers who object take their drives home? Could you offer a discount coupon on the next purchase, or free premium support for a year? That they let me walk out of the store, a person who spends thousands of dollars with Apple, feeling like I had been abused, says they haven't got all the glitches out of their retail process.  5. Falling back on the fine print is really lame. I think they should tell you up front, before they do the work, that you're not getting the old drive back. What if the data on the drive can be recovered? What if there are credit card numbers and other personal information on the drive? Source code? Trade secrets? Does Apple really want to treat their customers privacy so shabbily? For what? Don't they already make enough money off the $160 price for the new disk? It's amazing that a company can make it this far, having such special customers, and rarely if ever acknowledging it.
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'Critical' flaw with China-made HDDs? Data recovery company Retrodata has challenged Apple to come clean about what it claims is a "critical manufacturing flaw" affecting some hard drives used in MacBook laptops and desktops like the Mac Mini - an issue that could result in data loss.â¦
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Long the most common way to store letters, homework and other computer files, the floppy disk is going the way of the horse upon the arrival of the car: it'll hang around but never hold the same relevance in everyday life.
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I saw an ad in yesterday's NY Times that offered the complete New Yorker magazine archive, including all the cartoons and ads, going back to 1920-something for a bit more than the hard disk would cost. The ad was from J&R, the company that makes the product is Pexagon. $149. Sounds like there might be DRM. I asked for something like this from the music business. A hundred gigs of popular music for $500, all pre-installed on the disk without DRM.  Someone at the New Yorker had this idea too? It's a good one. Bulk content for collector types. Another source of revenue. I want to run my own personal radio station, so having every song of a certain genre or from a certain period makes the diff.
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2007 top science developments, tech flops, and vaporware...Szulik's parting words as Red Hat CEO...Sony Alpha A700 review...copyright tidbits...Toshiba 32nm deal with IBM
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My black MacBook, purchased in May of last year, a day after the product was announced and a day after the computer it replaced, a white G4 iBook, died -- died itself earlier today. There was an evil clicking sound coming from the back. The spinning rainbow cursor. Reboot it to see a disk with a flashing question mark.  The death of the black MacBook can only mean that there's a new sexy Apple laptop coming soon. Somewhere between a fat version of the iPhone and a Sony Vaio. Hope it has a real keyboard, not a virtual one.
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Will the competing next-generation optical disc standards ever meet in the same device? Not for now, it seems.
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It has been my theory for a little while that sometime in the near future, we are going to see the downfall of physical discs for watching movies. Check out this and other original content on CNET's blog network.
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Thanks for the hyperies The start-up that ignited the Opteron revolution has collapsed.â¦
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Media maker finally notices nobody uses floppies anymore Media manufacturer Verbatim has bought SmartDisk, a US-based vendor of portable and external disk drives and flash readers. The deal was agreed last month and finalised yesterday.â¦
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The Windows Future Storage (WinFS) technology that got cut out of Windows &quot;Longhorn&quot; is in serious trouble, and not just the hot water a feature might encounter for missing its intended production vehicle.