10 technologies that should be extinct (but aren't)

These obsolete technologies didn't get the memo--maybe because someone wrote it on a typewriter and faxed it to them

8. Disc Drives

Shiny plastic platters of all kinds--CD, DVD, even Blu-ray--are destined to eventually follow the various floppies, Zip discs, Click drives, and other portable storage media into the digital boneyard. These days, many of us get our software via downloads and our entertainment streamed to whatever device happens to be convenient. Yet discs and disc drives persist.

"You can download almost anything today and stream much of what you can't download," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. "Flash drives have dropped substantially in price, and we don't really need more than 64GB anyway (and you can get that in an iPod). So why don't we say hasta la vista to the disk drive and finally move to something lighter, more robust, and less noisy?"

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