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Why Do Boeing 747s Still Use Floppy Disks? Many small business owners would relate.

By Gene Marks

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Stephen Gibson | EyeEm | Getty Images

If you're old enough to remember floppy disks then, well, you're old.

I'm one of those people. I remember carrying around stacks of the little storage devices with me whenever I needed 1.4 MB of data to save. I remember when, just to install Microsoft Office, I had to insert, remove and reinsert dozens — yes, dozens — of those little things. I remember feeling cool because the little floppy disk was so much more advanced than those old-fashioned 5.25-inch ones. And I remember the excitement when (ready?) "zip" drives were introduced that had these newfangled looking floppy disks which could hold almost 100 times the data! That's 100 megabytes!

Wow. And then I remind myself that my smartphone how holds the equivalent of 177,000 floppy disks — yes 177,000 — and I just feel old.

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