13th September 2016, 5:01 AM
MAYBE 1998 might have been too soon, maybe. (I was already using rewritable CDs at the time, actually, and while they weren't AS rewritable as floppies, they certainly had more capacity, and they were cheap enough, even then, that I considered the tradeoff worth it. Seriously, the space on a floppy disk just wasn't enough for ANY files I actually cared to transfer, and if it was just text, e-mail had already replaced physical media of ANY sort for my data transfer needs.) However, seriously, 5 to 8 years? USB enclosures for hard drives would come along pretty early on, but are you honestly suggesting that they shouldn't have removed floppy support until 2006? No, that's ridiculous.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)