Transferring Data from PC to MAC

Scott, an external USB drive is the choice when you have customers sending you floppy disks. We use Iomega drives.
All the new Mac's do not have a floppy drive and an external drive is the only way to retrieve data from this disk.
However, why use a floppy at all when you can email the data?
Quicker and no chance of a corrupted file.
Peter was correct.

I personally hate floppies. Most of the files, somehow are corrupt and they tend to crash my computer while trying to open them.
Prefer email all the time.

Even Zip-disks are on their way out. I do happen to use Zip-Disks frequently. Even Zip-disks go buggy after a while. Cannot be re-configured sometimes. I have a pile that I keep as a memento at $15 per zip disk.
My choice? Invest in a CD/DVD external drive and purchase V7 of
Roxio/TOAST. (Not expensive.)
Sure beats a floppy or Zip drive that will create problems and the fact that you cannot download them sometimes.

-Kevin

Belated Thanks to P and Scott and Kevin - worthwhile and useful information.

By the way - I've been using floppies as a transfer medium for years and "quaint" as they may be, have never had to deal with a corrupted file - even on a PC.

P- as far as what program I use to create the ASCIIs ("just regular"), they're done through "quaint" word processing software from Britain - "Locoscript" - the best and simplest wp software I've ever used - over 10 years.

Thanks again -- Tosca

You might want to invest in a flash drive though, files are getting larger and flash medium is getting cheaper. It also make economical sense to get one as, if you have not already purchased a usb floppy drive for the Mac, there is that expense for something that will hardly get used.
Pretty soon even the PC's will come sans floppy drive. Dell does right now.

Hope you get your stuff moved ok


P

Hmmmm - I have about (1 1.44 floppies, none of which is near full, all of which are plain text-ASCII. That's it - 18, not hundreds. Knowing this, would you therefore change your recommendation? All this text is also on paper and I've been wondering about forgetting the floppies and just getting a printer-scanner. What do you think?

Tosca

you will be using it in the future.
The Printer/Scanner arrangement will involve OCR software and some messing around to scan/recognize/create new document.
This would probably take even longer than the floppy method.

P

If you have the patience - what is a Thumb/Flash Drive and about how much do they cost?
Tosca

It is a small device that uses Flash Memory, memory that does not empty itself when the power is removed. It connects to your machine via the USB port. They are usually about 2 inches long by 3/4 inch wide.
Check them out at Best Buy, Circuit City, Crucial.com or do a Google search for one
They can be had for as little as $15 and come in various sizes.
64, 128, 256, 512, 1Gb and so on. The larger the capacity the higher the price. They are formatted in such a way that both PC's and Mac can read and write to them.

You mean we had this long thread and you had no idea what I was talking about?

P

No idea re the flash memory parts - but there was a lot of other good information I could pick up.

And since I've gone this far, I may as well ask What does it read? CDs? Floppies? And how does it work? At 2" by 3/4" I'm a bit confused - is the device a "reader"?

Tosca

it is a small device that is really a Flash Memory based hard drive.
it mounts on the desktop, like any other medium on the Mac, and is treated as you would any drive.
It also mounts as a drive letter on the PC.
Go look it up at one of the on-line stores and see for yourself.

P

This is not an advertisment, you are free to shop wherever you want.

To find out what a Flash/Thumb drive is, copy and past this url into your browsers address line.

www.everythingusb.com/hardware/Storage/USB_Flash_Drives.htm

P

Thanks so much - you've been very helpful and may just get me, (though probably kicking and screaming) to let go of my old and dear - and sometimes cranky - machines and their "quaint" soft and hard equipment before they shut themselves down for good.

Tosca