R.I.P. Floppy Disk

You may all say the Floppy Disk has long since died a death but in Univerisities and Colleges, it is a reality that these are still used. For some reason, students all over the globe are using this redundant technology, sometimes leaving their only copy of their coursework on them dispute them being so unreliable. I’ve lost count of the amount of tears and frustration that these little buggers have caused students whilst I have been working at JLC.

However, today was the beginning of the end for the use of Floppy Disks within JLC. James and myself destroyed all of the old ‘lost’ Floppy Disks that have been handed in over my year there and destroyed a number of other random Disks that were lying around. I don’t really think we needed to bin as many as we did, I think we began to enjoy it a bit too much!

The new DELL units that we have purchased to go into the Open Access area will not be having Floppy Drives installed as this is an optional extra which we would have to pay extra for and would probably increase the lead time in us getting the units.

I think this will be met with a few complaints but, to be fair, you can pick up a 2Gb USB Flash Drive for about a tenner these days. There’s really no need for Floppy Disks, USB Flash Drives are very cheap these days, more reliable and can store a hell of a lot more data (2Gb USB Flash Drive = 1422 Floppy Disks)!