Once a necessity for computer users, the floppy drive is fast becoming a memory

ATLANTA — When Michael McCreary bought three new computers for his company, he had no need for one of the oldest and most common computer technologies, the floppy drive.

But like many computer customers, he ended up buying floppies anyway. After all, they’re cheap and he still has a few of the 3.5-inch disks lying around.

“As long as I need those files, I need a floppy drive around. Then I can toss them,” said McCreary, the president of an eight-employee Atlanta-area real estate management company. “The next computers I buy probably won’t even have a floppy.”

Long the most common way to store letters, homework and other computer files, the floppy 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.

And good riddance, say some home computer users. The march of technology must go on.

Like the penny, the floppy drive is hardly worth the trouble, computer makers say.

Dell Computer Corp. stopped including a floppy drive in new computers in spring 2003, and Gateway Inc. has followed suit on some models. Floppies are available on request for $10 to $20 extra.

“To some customers out there, it’s like a security blanket,” said Dell spokesman Lionel Menchaca. “Every computer they’ve ever had has had a floppy, so they still feel the need to order a floppy drive.”

A few customers have complained when they found their new computers don’t have floppy drives, but it’s becoming uncommon as they realize the benefits of newer technologies, Menchaca said. Almost all new laptops don’t come with a floppy.

More and more people are willing to say goodbye to the venerable floppy, said Gateway spokeswoman Lisa Emard.

“As long as we see customers request it, we’ll continue to offer it,” she said. “We’ll be happy to move off the floppy once our customers are ready to make that move.”

Some people may hesitate to abandon the floppy just because they’re so comfortable with it, said Tarun Bhakta, president of Vision Computers outside Atlanta, one of the largest computer retailers in the South.

At his store, the basic computer model comes with all necessary equipment, but no floppy.

“People say they want a floppy drive, and then I ask them, ‘When was the last time you used it?’ A lot of the time, they say, ‘Never,”’ Bhakta said.

The floppy disk has several replacements, including writeable compact discs and keychain flash memory devices. Both can hold much more data and are less likely to break.

Even so, floppies have been around since the late 1970s. People are used to them. They were the oldest form of removable storage still around.

In a sense, it’s amazing floppy disks have hung around for this long.

They only hold 1.44 megabytes of space — still enough for word processing documents but little else. By comparison, CDs store upward of 700 megabytes, and the flash memory drives typically carry between 64 and 256 megabytes.

It may not be too many years before floppy disks are joined by DVDs. Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently predicted the DVD would be obsolete within a decade.