Hey allyk
You say " i would say using a media solely for booting to run disk imaging and bios flashing programs qualifies as NICHE "
Well how else are you going to do it without a floppy drive !
And how are you going to do that in Windows XP without a floppy drive and a boot disk Buy a removable hard drive bay which when it goes down leaves you with nothing. Yeah that makes a lot of logic. I THINK NOT !
You Say " imagine this: you have a removable hard drive bay that you can boot from with the press of a key on this removable harddrive you have a dual-boot system: in partition 1 you have 'real dos' for flashing bios and whatnot. in partition 2 you have a full installation of XP with your disk imaging software (disks can be imaged under XP as long as they don't have any open files, which rules out the system partition for instance) and any other useful recovery utilities installed anything a floppy or cd can do for booting a system, a removable harddrive could do better
All of the stuff you mention here can be done on an ordinary Hard-drive with a floppy and a CDRW. So what is the point in changing a known good system to new technology which has known problems. So this is old hat it has already been done years ago and it failed then just like it will in the future.
You Say "anything a floppy or cd can do for booting a system, a removable harddrive could do better "
Yeah I agree with that !
For instance :-
Crash better !
Loose files better !
Make you swear better ( When they constantly crash your system ). Learn you how the type better when you have lost all your accounts and have to type them all in again because you didn't back them up on CDRW. Need I go on !!!!!! I think not!!!
You Say " don't disagree, however like i said, 'backing up' 'legitimate' software is a NICHE market."
It may be a NICHE market to you but not to the Millions of people who have bought programs and accidently damaged them and the have to wait for weeks to get them replaced and have to pay extra in the bargain !
You Say " you are wrong. The market has boomed (past tense), now it is approaching its zenith. Soon (1 year) it will plateau, then it will gradually decline (2-3 years) then it will crash down to niche status"
Dream on my friend CD Writers are here to stay unlike new technolgy which which never see's the light of day! Ask Iomgea if they are going to stop making CDRW's they started making them in the first place because the knew CDRW are replacing Zip Drives !
You Say " floppies and floppy drives are VERY cheap. Does anyone care? Will anyone care when cdrecorders approach similar prices? When was the last time you saw a competitive review of floppy drives?
The simple reason why we don't see Reviews on floppies is because they have been overtaken by CDRW so most of the companies turned to making CDRW as their main product. But how many modern computers are sold without a floppy ? CDRW's are here to stay choose what you say Ask the peolpe who use this Forum (Which was it was intended for CDRW-INFO !) if they think the days of CDRW's are doomed !
Personally I would love to see what Burner1000000 thinks about your beliefs because I do believe that he is the one to tell you more than I can ! And to be quite honest you are boring me to death and I am dissapointed you have not given your product a plug it may have given your failing REMOVEABLE HARD-DRIVE company a lift !
ENOUGH SAID FINO
CDRW'S WILL LIVE FOREVER Laffin Assassin
It's Nice to be Important!!!
But it's more Important to be NICE!!!