General Chat

Master and slave, Karen?! Am even more lost now. Off to sleep I think. zzzz :) Joy

My son saved a lot of things on floppy disc before buying a new computer, what he hadn't realised was that his new computer didn't even have a floppy disc drive. Val

Len, you can buy external drives; originally they were used in the crossover period when laptops didn't come with floppy drives as standard and home PCs didn't come with CD-Rs as standard. However, as floppys become obsolete so will the drives so don't leave it too long! With the UBS pen it wouldn't strictly be necessary to buy the external drive. You put the floppy into your old PC, save the photos to the pen, and plug it into your new PC, either saving them to hard drive or onto CD.

Now I do feel old! Don't understand this! Joy

My pc is nearly six years old and the hard disc is 90% full. To save space I have saved loads of pictures on floppies. If I buy a new pc without a floppy disc drive, is is possible to buy an external drive ? len

What about the Blackberry Hand Held?

Daniel Seems you are a bit behind the times then... My 17yo insisted that she had to have one 12 months ago. They are great though - just plug in and the computer sees it as another drive so you can drag and drop no problem. Just be sure to keep it away from strong magnets (speakers!) though. Bob

Still got a pile of punched cards, Sheila. As my programing project at college, I did my family tree. They said, nobody's ever done genealogy on a computer!!!! Could have made my fortune. On the other hand, as I had my great granny marrying her father over & over again until the machine ran out of paper.... perhaps not! B

Just been having a look on Play and Amazon and apparently a 128Mb usb pen will hold the equivalent of 88 floppy disks. WOW! lol Jeanette x

USB pens are those things that look like lipstick holders/tampon holders, aren't they? I've just been shown how to use our schools latest gadget - forget laptops, we have tablets (and we will keep taking them!). You can use them with conventional plug-in mouse &/or keyboard, or you can use a special pen to tap on the screen instead of clicking on an icon. You can tap on an onscreen keyboard, or you can write on the tablet with the pen and it converts your handwriting into text. I think it will have fun trying to decipher the handwriting of some of our children - maybe a good way of persuading them to form their letters correctly! nell

Are they those things that look a bit like MP3 players? We had an order arrive at school the other day and I couldn't work out why the Deputy had ordered so many MP3 players, durr! Then I realised they were from a computer company. So we've moved on from CDs then have we? Please don't anyone tell my husband I'm asking ICT questions on here when I should be asking him to display his prowess LOL!! Mandy :))

I have some 8 inch floppies, some 5 1/4 floppies And a bbc model B computer, It was wonderful to get away from the Spectrum Tapes.......

Sigh - I can remember the days of 5.25in. floppy disks, and, going back even further, punched cards!! You know you're old when the computer you worked on as a student is now in the Science Museum!

Please what is a usb pen? Is it kind of like an MP3 player type thing? I wanted to back up my geneaolgy stuff last weekend and my computer just wouldn't accept a floppy disk. As I haven't got cd writer this usb pen thing sounds as though it could be for me. Jeanette x

Bought a 256Mb pen from Playcom last week for £17.99 complete with a lead.

Hot-pluggable external hard drives with 160Gb of storage! I imagine that they will give way to USB pens before long, though. Michael

I have one too, 256mb, bought it about a year or so ago, invaluable

can't remember the last time I used a floppy disk. I have a floppy drive for my work laptop, but its a hot swap one and has never been used. Home laptop doesnt even have a floppy drive I think.

PMSL

Ooh Grampa! You are naughty!