Modern floppy disk question...

[Eric Smith]

Richard wrote:
> To add to the problem- why are modern floppy drives such junk?

For $10 you expect quality?  (Other than the quality of being junk?)
It's another triumph of crapitalism.  When everyone (to a first
approximation) is more concerned about price than quality, all the
manufacturers produce low-priced junk, because there's not enough
demand for a quality product to make it worthwhile to manufacture.
If someone tried to sell a really high-quality drive today, they'd
probably have to price it at $75 or more, and how many could they
sell at that price?

I haven't had too much trouble with new Teac drives purchased in the
last year.

I really don't understand how they can manufacture these, ship them
across the ocean to a distributor, the distributor ships them to a
dealer, and the dealer sells them to me for $10, and someone makes
a profit at each step.  Making a floppy drive (even not a very good
one) still requires some precision manufacturing.  If all they had to
do was pick them up off the ground (like a rock), put it in a box, ship
it across the ocean, to the distributor, to the dealer, and finally to
me, I'd have expected to have to pay more than $10 for it.

Eric