Genealogy Chat

I was looking for a standard computer for my mum today and they asked the usual questions......... One of my replies was that she would be saving things onto floppy disc. The man in the store looked at me slightly amazed and told me that they are not doing them anymore. My question is how do you save things then? As you can tell I am not very computer literate I just know the basics that I need to research my family. If anyone can explain saving things I would be very grateful otherwise the mountain of floppy discs I have will be of no use to me in the future

I guess most people save them onto CDs now, or to memory sticks. They are just different devices, you plug them into the computer and copy what you want to save onto them. CDs look like CDs, memory sticks look a bit like a lipstick holder only with rounded ends. nell

Hi Helen Do these CDs have to be special ones. I have a dvd writer on my computer (apparently) and I have two drawers one says DVD Rom and the other says compact disc. Are these what I need. I am going to have to find time for computer lessons from my kids lol

I was dismayed by the demise of the floppy too but memory sticks are GREAT. So fast and so large (in memory terms) and so portable. The memory stick just plugs into a USB socket on the computer. All new computers have several of them. A memory stick will cost between about £12 and £35 depending on size of memory. Anne

One of the two drawers is for playing CD's....the other, the CD burner, will allow you to both play and save to CD. I find CD-R disks are best. It's just as easy to save information to CD as it is a floppy but a CD holds a ton more information than a floppy! Judy :)

Thankyou all for your help. I was beginning to think I would have to buy a new computer then. (hubby would have heart attack)

Hi Memory sticks are useful and come into their own for transfering data between machines. I would not be tempted to use one as storage as you can easily overwrite data on it. CD are now the most common way of storing. Once again I tend not to be to careful with mine and have damaged them by leaving them uncased on my desk. If you have a DVD writer, you can also use this and save 4.7Gbytes of data onto it. These disc can now be purchase from 12 - 25p each. I buy mine at Tesco when they do the buy one get one free packs of 10. Cheers Paul

well arent you getting clever Margaret, thought you said you didnt understand the PC that sounds good to me .

You could also use a portable hard drive, you can get even more on these. As for the memory sticks, you can get them with a lock on to stop you over writing them, like every thing,you get what you pay for, Bren