Britain's biggest computer retailer says it will no longer sell floppy disks once existing stock has been sold.
PC World says the iconic storage device of the 80s and 90s is no longer adequate for today's computing requirements.
Demand for the 3.5 inch disk has plummeted as PC owners have opted for CDs, DVDs, USB memory sticks and memory cards.
"The sound of a computer’s floppy disk drive will be as closely associated with 20th century computing as the sound of a computer dialling in to the internet", said Bryan Magrath, the commercial director of PC World.
"The pace of technological change is relentless and it is now increasingly standard for computer users to transfer data via the internet or use USB memory sticks, some of which will store the equivalent of 1,000 times the capacity of floppy disk.
"With that amount of memory available in such a small and convenient device, the floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn’t able to compete."
Transferring data via e-mail has also contributed to the demise of the floppy, which in turn sounds the death knell for systems with an 'A' drive.
In fact, 98% of PCs and laptops sold by PC World no longer have in-built floppy disk drives. By the summer, it expects that the number will rise to 100%.
The retail giant pointed out that floppies had their heyday in the early 1990s, when complex software meant that many programs were distributed on sets of the flexible disks.
Toward the end of the 1990s however, software distribution gradually switched to CD-ROM, and higher-density backup formats were introduced.
With the arrival of mass Internet access, the proliferation of recordable or rewritable CDs, and other storage devices - such as memory sticks capable of holding 6,000 times the information, the floppy's role for data transfer and storage became redundant.
The floppy disk was invented by Alan Shugart to hold 100 KBS of data. IBM was first to introduce them to market in 1971, by offering consumers an 8-inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide.
In a type of eulogy to the floppy, PC World said: "The floppy disk was revolutionary device...due to its portability and the ease with which data could be transferred from computer to computer."
Feb 1, 2007
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