Jim Sachs said:
I just don't see anything on the horizon which could replace the floppy. Burning a CD is still a major undertaking compared to just dumping a file to a floppy. I have 4 machines with CD burners, and none of them really like CDs which are made on any of the others.
I'm sorry that you are having configuration problems on your computers, possibly with marginal burning software/ burners/or blanks? Are you trying to get a wide cross-section of users who run the Aquarium this way?
High quality burners (Plextor, TDK, Ricoh, Yamaha) burning with high-quality software (Nero, Exact Audio Copy), onto high-quality blanks (TDK, Memorex, Verbatim, Mitsui) WILL work on ANY player you throw them at except DVD players with a single laser.
Don't even get me started on CDRW.
CD-RW is a very mature format.
What might be confusing is if you are extending the data that is already on the CD. In most cases, I erase the CD-RW and use it as a blank CD again. Only if you are extending an existing CD-RW for a specific reason should you do it.
I have to say when you mention computer meltdowns/problems/etc. you get a lot of deserved sympathies. But I have to wonder sometimes if the choice of hardware is the real culprit here.
My cash resources at the time I bought my first CD burner were .00001% of yours. Which one did I buy? The HP? the Philips? At a time when the only CD burner you could buy in any store were HP/Philips drives that burned at 1x for $400 and had serious compatibility problems, which one did I buy? The $550 external Yamaha SCSI 4x burner. Out of a few hundred discs, I had maybe 5-10 coasters and that was because of mistakes on my part or bad blanks. Of course if I visit Calif, you would never let me in your computer room, otherwise I would go around and make a shopping list and head off to CompUSA and start trying to improve the stability of your development environment.
*sigh*
Memory sticks, compact flash cards, etc, would be great, but there are a half-dozen different proprietary formats, with no standard in sight.
It does not matter what you buy, so buy something! CompactFlash and SmartMedia are the industry leaders. CompactFlash will read in any laptop with a $12 small adapter without any need for software/drivers/other help. if you are paranoid about ending up with a memory card that won't work in a computer that doesn't have the right slot for it, get a USB drive. These are the size of a fat ballpoint pen but shorter and hold 64, 128MB or more. There are no drivers to install and it hooks up to any USB port on the planet. You plug it in, and a drive letter shows up. Finish what you're doing, pull the drive out, and you're ready to go.
There is no reason not to jump on the flash memory bandwagon (although for your needs, 802.11b is what I'd get).
I like the size and feel of a floppy. I like the hard shell which you can grab any way you want instead of gingerly picking it up the way people handle CDs. I like the way a floppy fits in my shirt pocket, so I can always have it with me.
Floppies are made so poorly that the chances of data getting from my home to someone's house on a floppy intact are slim and none. I have not used floppies for 3 years because I never have so little data to transfer. I can write a CD with 50 floppies worth of stuff in 45 seconds and the CD works on ANY reader.
But most of all, I like the fact that you can still get the floppy out when the machine is powered-down or locked-up, just by pressing a good, solid mechanical ejector button.
As much of a fan of the Mac people as you are, they still don't have an eject button.
It is an absolutely trivial matter to turn the power back on to the PC long enough to eject the disc and then power off the PC before it starts booting up. Or you can do it the Mac way and insert a straightened paperclip.
Yes, my main machine has XP with a CD/DVD burner. Still a hassle compared to a floppy, because of all the writing/rewriting that goes on when I want to make a copy. "Oops, was that the debug or release version I just copied?" Wrong one. Another copy. "Oops, did I change the icon on that file?" No. Another copy. I've usually gone through about 6 CDs just to take a copy across the street and try it out on my neighbor's computer.
I can't even begin to imagine what steps are generating these results.
