Saw this on today and had to post--enjoy!

The MSX is a home computer system much like the AppleII, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC and Commodore 64. Home computers were first developed in the 70's to be able to compete with the hugely expensive PCs that were available at the time. Home computer systems were relatively cheap and could easily outperform the PCs in terms of graphics, sound and versatility. Read more below on how to actually use games, disks and files on these (old) wonderful computer systems.

I saw in the headlines today that Sony is suspending its million+ unit floppy disk production (3 1/2", of course). I guess what surprised me most was that it hadn't stopped long ago. Outside of retro purposes, does anyone seriously use these disks anymore? I have few good memories of them--just all the read/write errors and the inevitable march to destruction. The disk drives themselves were also always unreliable. I know I've replaced more faulty disk drives than any other component. They were a significant step up from the 5 1/4" disks, of course. It's too bad that the industry couldn't settle on a standard for the bigger capacity disks (iomega, zip, etc.), but of course those were mere flashes in the pan compared to the 3 1/2". The article suggests that USB and other types of storage killed it off, but I'd say it was more the CD and later DVD burners. Once the price got cheap enough, it made more sense to burn everything to those and tuck them away.

What are your thoughts on the floppy disk? Will they be missed? (And, yes, I realize that other companies will keep making them into the foreseeable future.)