Japan is struggling to quit floppy disks and fax machines

[nahtanbob]

It's easier to "upgrade" if the existing infrastructure doesn't exist in the first place. It's easy for african countries to go fiber optics because more often than not there's no legacy equipment to upgrade so they just buy new unlike in America where the process to replace copper cabling would take years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Also It's easy to buy flat screen TV if it's the first TV you owned whereas it's going to be harder for yo average american to upgrade to flat screen TV if the CRT is working just fine especially if it's a high end Sony Trinitron TV.

You don't want to replace 20 y.o CNC machine with a new one just because said CNC machine store instructions on floppy disk. Similarly upgrading the machine would take precious manufacturing time as well as bugs to be ironed out that also cost money

I had to convince myself it is okay to throw away perfectly functional Sony Trinitron TV

Wrong, refusing to let go of legacy tech is Japanese and Americans, not Chinese.

China never had the legacy tech on the scale of USA or Japan

 

[beijingwalker]

China never had the legacy tech on the scale of USA or Japan

Yes, China is fully digital and cash free while you guys still carry your plastic cards everywhere.

 

[nahtanbob]

Yes, China is fully digital and cash free while you guys still carry your plastic cards everywhere.

I am cash free. I do not fully trust Paypal, Apple Pay and Google Pay to eliminte my credit cards

 

[Sinnerman108]

Does it have anything to do with the fact that Japan is an ageing society, where many elderly people are still working and are used to the devices from their youth. Or maybe there is a fondness for old stuff? A mistrust of digital documents? Very strange.

I have noticed in American movies even post 2000, the TVs always seem to be CRT, video cassette players being used, while in India these went extinct in the 90s.

More than aging, Japan is a very traditionalist society.

 

[hirobo2]

What you guys smoking?!?! Chinese wholesale companies in North America still use fax machines to take order and it's the primary way when not taking orders by phone.

It's not the Japanese that still has the love for faxes, but also Chinese Americans!

As for floppy disks, I can tell you they should be way better than USB flash drives. I have distrust for (removable) solid state drives. They get corrupted so easily you have to reformat them very often. I assume floppy disks are more reliable in terms of data integrity especially in applications like banking transactions...