In a sign of the times, Sony on Monday confirmed that it will soon end the sale of floppy disks.

In a sign of the times, Sony on Monday confirmed that it will soon end the sale of floppy disks.

Sony Tokyo will end sales of 3.5-inch floppy disks in Japan, effective March 2011, a Sony spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The disks have been shipping in Japan since 1983. Evolving technology and storage options, however, including cloud computing and high-capacity USB drives, not to mention computers that no longer include disk drives, have made the floppy disks less useful in recent years.

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