I finally picked up a 1 GB USB flash drive [actually, it was a few months ago, but I digress].
Maybe it’s because I’m an “old timer”, but 1GB in a tiny package at an “impulse buy” price point is just incredible. No wonder the 1.44 MB floppy disk is dead. This little flash drive holds almost as much data as 700 of those floppies, it’s small enough to leave on your keychain, and it’s far more durable.
Thinking even farther back, I remember when I loaded programs for my Atari 800 from a cassette tape! It took several minutes just to load a few dozen K of data. It was a big deal when I finally got a 5-1/4″ floppy drive. I got a special “double-density” drive which held about 180KB (you could flip the disk over to get another 180KB, for a total of 360KB)…So my flash drive holds almost as much as 3000 of those old floppies! Wow.
