The death knell for the humble floppy drive may have been sounded, following Dell's decision to stop installing them on all new PCs.
The Texas-based company has said it will no longer install the devices on its PCs, except as an optional extra, starting next month. Like eight-track tapes and even its 5-1/4 inch floppy cousin, the 3-1/2 inch, 1.44MB floppy disk now faces near extinction.
Analysts have said that Dell's decision is probably a precursor to a strategy that most PC makers will embark upon in the next couple of years. It has been almost five years since Apple Computer Inc stopped including floppy disk drives in Macintosh computers.
The move from Dell has been coming for some time. In 2001, the company stopped selling floppy drives on some business desktops, followed by a similar move on the Inspiron 4150 and 8200 laptop models in 2002.
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