By: Ashley Cerasaro
Weekender Correspondent

Technology and I have a love-hate relationship.

Granted, there’s nothing better than getting a new “toy,” as most men refer to it, but I’ve always been a bit weary of our dependence on such things.

I’ve experienced first hand the danger of programming friends’ and families’ numbers into my cell phone only to have a technician fry it, leaving me both helpless and numberless. I’ve also fallen victim to corrupt files, undelivered c-mails and my personal favorite - obsolete equipment - more times than I would’ve cared to.

Just this past December I found myself in a predicament because I needed to print a file that was saved on a floppy disk, but my laptop didn’t have the drive necessary to read it. When I started college four years ago, everyone was floppy happy, but when I was in the market for a laptop two years ago, none of them had a floppy drive. When I asked a sales associate about it, he explained that floppies were a thing of the past and that jump drives were now “the thing.”

So I bought my new laptop, along with “the thing,” which was all well and good, but what about the two packs of floppies still sitting at my desk? Do I move all the files back onto the hard drive only to resave them onto the jump drive, or do I just keep them around for decoration?

Enter the SMARTDISK FDUSBB2 2X USB floppy drive. Don’t let the long name confuse you, this external drive reads and writes 1.44 MB floppies at twice the standard speed. Available at J&R Music and Computer World for only $26.99, its sleek, black design and easy installation will make it your smartest purchase this year. So if you’re sick of your floppies collecting dust, visit www.jr.com for more product details.