So today I had this moment. The floppy disk? Dead. Officially.
Here's what happened. I move files between home and work all the time over FTP. Leaving the office today, needed to grab a Word doc to work on this weekend. Network's down for maintenance. Great. File's only 350K so naturally I'm thinking: floppy disk. Spent 15 minutes looking. Couldn't find a single one anywhere in the building. Not one!
Had a CD burner. Had blank CD-Rs. But burning a 600 MB disc for a 300K file felt absurd.
A colleague bailed me out with his Sony Micro Vault. Basically a MemoryStick with a USB plug on it. Computer sees it as a 128 MB hard disk. Dropped the file on, took it home, done. This thing weighs the same as one floppy, fits in a shirt pocket, holds 100 floppies' worth of data, and transfers instantly. No waiting around for that grinding floppy noise.
The floppy is finished. Long live USB storage! Laptop makers should just ditch the floppy drive already. Waste of space, waste of battery. Move on.