"Jose" wrote in message
...
Well, as you say, "just look at the Sunday flyers. If you live in any
decent sized city, you've got the usual chain stores, and they often run
promotions in which..." That's how I got mine. CompUSA if I remember
right. Of course it was some five years ago, back when they were "only"
obsolete.

Well, if you can find a promotion like that today, "free" seems accurate
enough. I had a hard enough time finding any vendor publishing retail
prices for floppies.

In any case, the real costs associated with the floppy aren't the disks.

If I am travelling, and am faced with a Windows 98 computer, I will not be
able to use my USB device (an Olympus camera), even if other USB devices
are on the system. I will not be able to install software on somebody
else's computer.

I've yet to try it with a real thumb drive though.

I doubt you would have any trouble, assuming the Windows 98 computer has the
standard USB drivers installed (and I don't see any reason it wouldn't). In
any case, if you are carrying data around while travelling, a CD is still a
much better option. It's not uncommon to run into a PC these days without a
floppy drive, but one without an optical drive is much less usual.

Huh? Apple has always had networking built in. Connect up the Appletalk
cable and you're good to go.

One computer's upstairs. The other is downstairs. The third is across
the street. Floppies work. And the internet is hardly "assured to be
present".

Neither is it guaranteed that the floppy drive will keep working. Still,
both are reasonably reliable, and there are much better alternatives to a
network (Internet or LAN) than floppy drives.

More importantly, if someone is not in a situation where they necessarily
need to deal with obsolete hardware, then there's no reason to buy
obsolete hardware to go with their new PC.

I'm not telling Jay what to buy. I'm just saying not to be so quick to
eliminate the older stuff.

And I'm saying one should definitely be quick to eliminate the older stuff.
For a small minority of people, there are very specific reasons to maintain
compatibility with obsolete technology. For most people, there is simply no
good reason to bother with a floppy drive, and there are modest reasons to
NOT bother.

Pete