Overall, tapes are not easy to use. However, tapes do have their good points. Tapes are most useful when you will be doing large, frequent back ups which you don't need to keep for lengthy periods of time. Floppy disks drives are, without question, the most compatible. They are readily available and the format of the disks is standardized within operating systems.
Tape drives, on the other hand, can be one of the least compatible.
There are a number of different tape formats. There are essentially two methods for backing up. You can simply copy files from one storage device or another, or you can use a backup application. The advantages of the copy method are pretty straight forward. You don't have to buy, learn, or use any new software.