Farewell, floppy disk!

German news service Tagesschau sings the swan song,,OID6385352_REF1,00.html about a storage medium I grew up with: the floppy disk. The article describes how the floppy gradually got replaced by ZIP disks, CD ROMs, DVDs and USB sticks. Today, computer manufacturers don't bother with installing a floppy drive any more.

But the author not only knows about the reasons of the floppy vanishing but also about its emotional consequences:

It's time to finally say good bye to the floppy disk. But whoever saw the moist eyes of PC nostalgics when talking about the 5 1/4 inch disk, the bigger, somewhat floppier predecessor of the smaller quadratic disks, knows: that won't be easy for some of the hardcore hackers.

Oh yes, it's hard. Here's a picture of my first 5,25" floppy disk:

It came empty with my Commodore C128, so it's 20 years old now. The label says "128: The First" and was written with a typewriter.

Today, it's hanging on the wall at my desk at home. Above a Mac Mini that will never know what a floppy disk is. Or was.