Hard drive (was "floppy disk"--why "floppy"?)

[Tom Kysilko]

At 11:24 AM 5/10/2001 -0700, ANNE V. GILBERT wrote:
>I used to work in a market research company when computers were first
>becoming widespread, but before the Internet was even a gleam in anybody's
>eye. ... at that time, the internal machinery, crude as it was compared to
>internal machinery now(which is all "modular"), was called, collectively the
>"hard drive", as opposed to the internal hard drive *disks* we have in
>computers nowadays.

Heavens, say it ain't so!  For almost ten years I have taken the use of
"hard drive" to refer to a whole computer as an infallible sign of computer
illiteracy.  Luckily, I'm not given to put-downs, but I'd hate to think how
many mental apologies I would owe if this were true.



  Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
  pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA