New computer

[Beckie]

Hi, I just wanted everyone's opinion one something.

My sister just got a computer that my brother and brother-in-law picked out for her. She's a college student and just needs a computer for the basics to do with school stuff and what not.

Well it turns out that the guys were more interested in getting what they wanted (an advanced DVD burner and 160GB) instead of what she needed (a floppy drive) even though it was her money being spent and now she and I are slightly angry because the PC has one main problem; there is no floppy drive.

They believed the guy at the store (who works on commission) that floppy drives are useless and on their way out and that everyone will be saving work on CDs so they got one without a floppy drive that was even more costly. These guys know nothing about computers as this was their first purchase and I think they got taken by the guy at the store. She actually does need a floppy drive as we pointed out to them because many of our professors want us to hand in a floppy drive as a hard copy of our term papers now.

She doesn't want to return the tower because it'll be too much of a hassle to deal with as the guys got it upgraded to have certain features without her knowledge. She doesn't want to disturb my brother-in-law's manhood either which would happen if she took away his advanced DVD burner (burning PS2 games is highly important in his life) and 160GB which she finds excessive, as 60-80GB would have been fine enough.

So, here's what I'm asking:

First of all, are floppy drives on their way out? Everyone I have told about this situation has said that they are very essential still (who wants to save a 5 page essay to a CD anyway?) I figure the store just wants to charge them more for adding a floppy drive to a tower. $$$!!!....

Second of all, my brother-in-law plans to get AutoCad soon for the computer for work reasons and says he needs all those GB and more as apparently it needs about 300GB which I said is wrong. I assume he means at least 300MB RAM (they have 512MB) because he has no idea what all that means. Does anyone know for sure? I also told him that he won't want to save his work to the hard drive but rather to an external drive (ie. Zip) in case the computer crashes. Is this a better idea?

And, does anyone have recommendations on an external floppy drive that would go well with an HP computer? There is a panel that can be removed to add in one so is there an HP floppy drive that will fit in there that we can put in ourselves or should we have it put in by someone else? I have installed a DVD burner in another computer as well as many ethernet cards if that gives you any idea as to my installation abilities. Anything under $250 CDN all together would be great as that is the offset of the mischief the boys got up to. I've added a link to the computer that was purchased and upgraded:

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pr..._id=0665000FS10046272&catid=10607&newdeptid=1

Thanks so much

 

[athlon64fx]

autocad doesnt need 300gb!!! it does hovever need 512 megs of ram.

floppies are being phased out. there are some now that also have memory car readers in them for memory stick, compact flash, etc.

tigerdirect.com has good stuff

 

[Dynamix]

Floppys are less used but just get 1 they are very easy to install, also there are very cheap u could pick up a used one for around $5, if not even a external usb one isnt too much id say about $25 or so.

 

[airiox]

cds ar cheaper see if she can get som cd\rw they will last a long time.

But if she needs a floppy drive just find a black one at a local store. Shouldnt be too much and all you need to do is to put it into the computer and supply power to it. Which isnt hard at all.

Dont know canada so you will have to look yourself.

 

[gibant1]

Instead of giving the professor a floppy disk, give them a cd.

For saving work I use pen/flash/bar drives.

 

[Beckie]

Thanks guys, I'm glad to hear they don't cost too much.

Our profs don't accept anything but floppy disks, as they only want to be dealing with one kind of format for all 65+ students. We're lucky they'll accept floppies as some won't even accept them because they hate computers and will only accept paper copies; that's the problem. They're all 50+ and don't see the need to get updated computers and have no idea what all this new technology is all about. A couple weeks ago my one prof looked at my MP3 player while I was pulling it out after class and had no idea what MP3 players even were. He's been asking questions ever since and thinks it would be easy enough to use so is considering buying one. That's the kind of people we're dealing with here.

I know she has the ports for a compact flash drive so I'll suggest she hits my brother-in-law up for one of those as well seeing as we still have about $200 to spend, and he's decided they have to be ahead of the game with all the ohter stuff he upgraded it to.