Time's up tech(Microsoft)

The end is nigh for the floppy disk. Sony sounded the death knell for the archaic storage format last month, when it announced it would completely cease production of floppies by March 2011.

It's a surprise it's taken so long, but then out-of-date technology has a habit of clinging to life by its virtual fingertips, kept alive by a mixture of nostalgia and consumer inertia.

But nothing lasts forever, and plenty of once-popular gadgets and technologies are now teetering on the brink of existence. Take a moment, then, to wave goodbye to these soon-to-be-extinct technologies.