Today I realized that the floppy disk is truly a thing of the past. I frequently move files between my computer at home and my computer at work using FTP over the Internet. Today, when leaving to go home, I wanted to send myself a Word document to work on over the weekend. When I went to FTP it, I found the network was down for maintenance. Naturally, I thought of the floppy disk drive since the file in question was only 350K in size. Unfortunately, after looking all over for 15 minutes, not a single floppy disk was to be found. I did have a CD burner available and a CD-R, but wasting a 600 MB CD on a 300K file seemed quite the waste to me. Finally I ran into a colleague who had a Sony Micro Vault. The Micro Vault is essentially a MemoryStick with a USB connector. The device appears to the computer as a slick, 128 MB hard disk. I put the file in the Vault and took it home, easily transferring it to my PC. The Micro Vault weighs the same as a single floppy disk and is smaller - it fits in a shirt pocket. It also holds the equivalent of approximately 100 floppy disks. It can transfer the file in a second as opposed to waiting a minute or so for a file to load off of a floppy. The disk is done - long live USB storage! In the future, laptop designers should just leave out the floppy disk drive. It takes up space, drains the battery, and provides minimal benefit. Time for the world to move on.