It's certainly true to say that floppy discs have largely become redundant due to their limited capacity (just 1.44MB in the most common 3.5in format). However, what's equally notable is that the need for a rewritable, removable storage media is just as pressing as ever.

In the Internet era, many futurists posited that this wouldn't be the case. With ever-ready network connections, all our data could be stored online, and we'd access it from whatever device was most convenient at the time. Or that was the theory.

There's no doubt that you can try to live your life this way, especially if you're happy to load your Gmail inbox to capacity. But there's also no doubt that there are many occasions when you still want an offline copy -- one that you know you'll have access to even if your ISP chucks a wobbly or the 3G card suddenly offers sub-GSM performance.

Even in a connected environment, moving data off a USB key (the natural successor to the floppy) is much, much quicker than downloading it. If you're sitting in a hotel business centre and planning to send off some files, why pay more money than you have to?

For all those reasons, our need for external storage is as strong as ever. CDs and DVDs never quite cut it for portability; they're great for backup, but too slow for quick movement. USB keys have taken on that role, and while they may not be the same shape or capacity as the rapidly-fading floppy, they're serving exactly the same function.
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