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Have we stepped back into the 1980s? Why is this a top story on the BBC News website? Who is using floppy discs? The Japanese it would appear. I thought they were ahead of the technical revoloution?

In March the firm stopped sales of the disks in most international markets due to dwindling demand and competition from other storage formats.

Only in March?! The last floppy disc I had contained Theme Park – the original – I honestly can’t fathom how anyone is still using this format and not USB drives or CD/DVD storage.

The full story is after the jump.

Source: BBC News

The slow death of the “floppy” or “diskette” began in 1998 when Apple decided to not include a floppy drive in its G3 iMac computer.

Since then various other firms have stopped support for floppy disks, including computer giant Dell in 2003.

Computing store PC World stopped selling them in 2007.

However, Sony has continued to sell the disks, and continues to ship them in the millions.

Now, the firm – which claims to have produced the first 3.5in (9cm) disks in 1981 – has decided to halt sales completely faced with competition from online storage and portable USB drives.