One of the first things I wanted to try with my little netbook was to see what manner of external storage could be used. Since it has three USB ports, logic would dictate that most "thumb drives" should work. Then there is the SD Card slot. What can it handle, what are its limitations?
I set out to find them. More or less.
What I discovered was pretty interesting.
Let's run down the list -
SD Card - Check
USB "Thumb Drives" - Check
USB Floppy Drive - Check... huh?
That was a bit of a surprise to me too, but it seems logical. There were a number of Windows CE laptops over the past decade, and some of them, such as the DreamWriter, had floppy drives. Knowing Microsoft's penchant for legacy code hiding in the depths of many of their operating systems, it was a gamble I was willing to take. One of my favorite cameras is my Sony Mavica, which uses floppy disks for storage; since these two devices will do a bit of traveling together, this was kind of important.
That's not to say that I'd advocate using an external floppy drive all the time. It is quick and sure death to battery life (them little motors in that drive, you see).
So while external CD drives might require quite a bit of work, you can access your old floppy disks. As to why you might want to is your business, and as always, your mileage may vary...
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