Last rites for the floppy disk

Is it the end of the line for the floppy disk?

British computing store PC World has announced it will stop selling floppies once its current supply runs out.

"The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn't able to compete," commercial director Bryan Magrath told the BBC.

U.S. fans of the portable storage format shouldn't worry yet; it's still for sale at stores including CompUSA, Staples and Best Buy.

Finding a computer with a floppy drive? Well, that's another story.

Blog community response:

"Vista still pays homage to it by continuing to use a floppy disk as the icon for saving a document in Microsoft Word 2007. - I do hope this never changes. Won't it just be quite cool in, say, 40 years' time, when Microsoft Word 2047 still has that familiar icon, and we have to explain to our grandchildren about the 3-and-a-half inch disk. :) They'll be the next generation's phonograph."
--the_callipygian

"God I even remember when it waas the norm for software installation. Having to load in 5 or 6 floppies in a row to install a program. What a painstaking task that could be."
--Dardoz gets stuck in

"Wow, I can't really remember the last time I used one of our 'Universal Boot Floppies', I refuse to touch Win98 (any edition), and backing up anything from NT/2000 or newer to floppy was just stupid anyway."
--Data PoohBah