I work with a company that makes medical instruments for locations like
Blood Banks and Plasma Centers.  Our current instrument requires some
some intial teaching of the instrument and this information is stored
on the hard drive of the instrument.  We ask customers to backup their
information so that they don't have to reteach the instrument when
systems are upgraded.  We currently have a floppy diskette for this.
In planning for the next generation of the instrument we are going to
add a CD/DVD burner and some would like to remove the floppy disk.  I'm
concerned that a CD/DVD in the lab invironment is not as durable as a
floppy disk.  I'm thinking that since a CD/DVD can be be made
unreadable by scratches and smudges that it might not be a good option
for labs.  All of the data easily fits on one diskette and we've never
had problems with using a floppy diskette.  I'd actually like to see
both so that the customer has the option.  Currenlty our engineers want
to leave out the floppy drive.  Thier suggestion is that if the
customer wants to use a floppy they can use an external USB floppy.
I'm not sure if I agree with them on this but I was wondering if people
who work in labs have any preferences or opinions.

Thanks for your time.