I remember that awkward period after we outgrew floppies but before USB flash storage became mainstream when CD-RW and CD+RW (Yes there was a difference and it mattered!) being peddled as the next portable storage format. My first USB stick was 128 megabytes and cost around $60. I actually still have it, but it may no longer work. I believe I bought it in around 2003 or 2004. I remember them steadily decreasing in price, or at least price per unit storage, very quickly over the ensuing years, to the point where they were giving away multi-gig sticks by around 2009 or 2010.

  • radix
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    1 day ago

    I worked my way through college at my university computer lab (97-01). We went ALL IN on zip drives, so that’s what I used as my high capacity (lol) storage for longer than I should have (through maybe 2004-ish when the last drive died). Still have a bunch of disks around here somewhere. So…soon after that was my switch to thumb drives.