People in Chicago have asked me about the news that the floppy is going
out of style.  Here's more analysis of this non-trend.  I used my floppy
drive yesterday.

Kelly



    Diskettes squarely keep hold on public

By Peter Rojas

New York Times  News Service

    February 15, 2003

    With its measly 1.44 megabytes of storage capacity, the 3.5-inch
diskette is an anachronism in a world of 20-gigabyte MP3 players, DVD
burners and tiny memory cards that can hold hundreds of digital photos.

    Yet, like a lingering party guest who hasn't realized that it's time
to go home, it somehow holds on as a form of removable storage.

    Diskette drives still are found on most computers, even though few
people make much use of them. According to Disk/Trend Inc., a company in
Mountain View, Calif., that monitors the disk-drive industry, fewer than
10 percent of computer users store data on diskettes.

    Most people have discovered that it is easier to e-mail small text
files, even if it's to the person sitting at the next cubicle, rather
than put them onto a diskette. And diskettes don't provide much space
for storing large media files, like digital photos, video or MP3 audio.

    Another function of the diskette, as an emergency disk to boot up a
PC in case of a crash, has all but disappeared now that Windows uses its
installation CD-ROM for that.

    But though the diskette is fading, as its cousins the 5.25-inch and
8-inch floppy disks did before the dawn of the 21st Century, it is
taking its time. Disk/Trend estimates that about 70 percent of the
Windows PCs sold in the U.S. have diskette drives.

    Most manufacturers have decided that the low cost of adding a drive
to a PC (about $8 for a desktop computer) makes it practical to just
keep them in there rather than risk confusing or alienating consumers.

    Prior to the advent of the CD-ROM in the early 1990s, the diskette
was undisputedly the No. 1 removable storage medium in the world. Tens
of billions have been sold since the format's introduction in 1981, and,
at its peak, global annual production was about 5 billion disks.

    But as CD recorders for PCs grew cheaper, and the software industry
shifted to the CD-ROM and the Internet for distribution, diskette sales
steadily declined. Three years ago, 645 million diskettes were sold in
the United States. The number is expected to drop to 400 million this
year and to 120 million by 2006.

    Imation Corp., the world's largest manufacturer of diskettes,
remains committed to the format.

    "Our revenues for this business are stable, and we're actually
gaining market share as others drop out," said Michael Noer, the
company's global product marketing manager. "We're also seeing an
increase in demand for diskettes in China and Latin America, places
where virtually all PCs have diskette drives but relatively few have
CD-ROM drives or are connected to the Internet."

    There has been no shortage of would-be successors to the diskette,
with a dizzying array of options available. These include Zip disks, Jaz
disks, SuperDisks, Memory Sticks, Secure Digital cards, CompactFlash
cards, SmartMedia cards, USB drives and the endless acronyms of optical
media storage: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. All can
hold far more data than the diskette.

    Yet it is the abundance of options that has kept the diskette around
so long.

    Had the computer industry simply settled on a standard, the diskette
would have died out years ago. Somewhat haphazardly, the rewriteable CD,
or CD-RW, has emerged as the new de facto standard, said Jim Porter,
president of Disk/Trend. "Nearly all PCs sold in the U.S. today come
with a CD-ROM drive; the majority of them with a CD-RW drive as well,"
he said.

    Computer-makers have had mixed success in eliminating the diskette
drive. Apple caused a stir in 1998 when it introduced the driveless
iMac. The move initially stimulated a brisk business in external drives
in trademark iMac colors, but few Mac users now appear to be unhappy
about the lack of diskette drives on their computers.

    Dell, in 1999, and IBM, in 2000, introduced "legacy-free" computers
that came without diskette drives, using the space saved to make the
machines more compact. Both models proved to be disasters and were taken
off the market.

    Even so, Dell is trying again.

    "It's time to retire the diskette," said Mark Vena, product director
for Dell's Dimension line of PCs. Later this year, when consumers order
a computer from Dell, the default option will be the lack of a diskette
drive, and customers will have to pay extra if they want one. (The
drives will continue to be standard equipment on Dell's business line of
PCs.)

    Vena acknowledged that weaning consumers from diskette drives will
not be easy. Market research shows that most believe they need it, he
said.

    "But when you ask them when was the last time they ever actually
used it," he said, "the vast majority can't remember."


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