What’s the oldest piece of PC hardware in Britain?

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

My post on Windows 7’s lingering affection for floppy disks sparked a lively game of hardware poker on PC Pro’s Twitter account yesterday.

Within minutes, people were merrily tweeting in, trying to out-do one another with stories of old hardware that was still running perfectly, many years after it should have been rightfully retired to a landfill site in China.

@djbennett999 showed his hand early, claiming his dad still uses a Windows 98 PC with Internet Explorer 6.  He was, frankly, going all in with nothing stronger than a 2 and a 3. No fewer than 37 people arrived at the PC Pro website yesterday with a Windows 98 PC. Seven were still running Windows 95, while 10 diehards darkened our door with a Windows 3.x system. Sorry, @djbennett999, you’re playing with the big boys now.

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Windows 7 still clinging to floppy drives

Monday, July 20th, 2009

I can’t remember the last time I used a floppy disk. I can’t even remember the last time I had a PC with a floppy disk drive in it. Like Robbie Williams and MPs with a conscience, I’d largely forgotten they even existed.

Not Microsoft, though. The company may be ploughing on with its next-generation operating system, but it fondly remembers the days when Windows 95 came on no fewer than 13 floppy disks, and is still attempting to keep the flagging old storage technology alive in Windows 7.

This was the message I saw when I attempted to create a password reset disk in Windows 7 over the weekend:

Microsoft’s not even covering the bases: it suggests floppy drives ahead of those new-fangled USB sticks, so determined is the company to keep the 3.5in clickers alive.

Is someone on commission over there in Redmond? We demand answers.