December 2015

Who knew that the rest of the world didn’t call the old 3.5 inch floppy disks, ‘stiffies’?

The term ‘stiffy disk’ was a South African thing, apparently. And it made complete sense. I remember bemoaning the installation of Windows 3.1 at school, which took ages not just because you had to wait-and-insert stiffy disk after stiffy disk, but because invariably the installation would fail halfway at least 5 times, meaning starting the whole process all over again. There was no greater victory than arriving at school the next day to proclaim that your installation had completed successfully. And it was sure as hell a lot better than suffering the whiirrrrrriinnggg sound of death that came with 5.25 inch floppy disks! Long live the stiffy disk!

We were pioneers:
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/f/Floppy_disk.htm

P.S. Boo, floppies!