Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tikal!dad!eric
From: eric@dad.UUCP (Eric Schilling)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 3.5" HD Diskettes
Message-ID: <3564@dad.UUCP>
Date: 2 Sep 88 16:13:57 GMT
References: <3832@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: R & D Associates, Tacoma, WA
Lines: 23

in article <3832@bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) says:
> 
> So why is everybody so enthusiastic about these 3.5-inch drives that
> let you write 1.44 megabytes (0.24 megs more than my AT's high-density
> drive) for a small fortune per disk and without preserving the ability
> to exchange data with the standard PC?  Is the ability to put a
> 3.5-inch disk in your shirt pocket so vital?
> 
I have both a 1.2M 5.25" drive and a 1.44M 3.5" drive and I prefer the
3.5" drive by far.  While it is true that media costs are prohibitive, they
are coming down.  I don't think that even the most disk hungry user is
going to want that many of them though.  The real reason I prefer my 3.5"
is because I can store a lot more information in a lot less shelf space.
Cost aside, which would you rather manage, 100 1.44M 3.5 disks or about 
the same number of 5.25's?  What about 200 or 500 disks?

When 360K floppy disks first came out, there was a lot of grumbling about
how much more they cost than 180K floppies and there was griping when the 
1.2M floppy format made its debut but, the prices went down to more 
reasonable levels when the formats became widely used.  The same thing is
going to happen with 1.44M HD disks, it is just going to take a while.

Eric Schilling
m-net!gandalf