Dell, the canary in the coal mine of PC manufacturers, has started to phase out diskette drives on their desktops. Unless they ask for them, customers won’t have a place to stick their floppy in their shiny new top-o’-the-line (“Dude! I’m gettin’ a”) Dimension PCs.
Apple stated phasing out diskette drives in desktops in 1998, with the introduction of the iMac (which also replaced serial and Apple’s proprietary ADB ports in favor of USB). But that was then, and this is now, and Apple is lagging behind the industry on USB 2.0.
Dell plans to migrate its stupid customers — the ones who haven’t quote caught on that CD-Rs hold 640 MB and cost a quarter — to $20, 16 MB USB “memory keys”. Why, gimmie a box of ten! (Thanks, Kevin!)