Will floppy drives become extinct?

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends & analysis - Brief Article

Floppy disk drives have been the most widely used method of transferring data between computers since the dawn of the computer age, but they soon may go the way of the dinosaur.

Dell Computer recently announced it would stop making floppy disk drives standard equipment on its higher-end desktop personal computers. The No. 2 computer maker said floppy drives had been overtaken by technologies such as USB flash memory, which offers greater storage capacity, and would become an option on its Dimension 8250 models. Other Dell models may lose the floppy by year's end, depending on consumer response, said a Dell spokesman.

Today, most computer programs...