Floppy drives took years to disappear from pre-built PCs. These days, optical drives are starting to fade from many machines, especially laptops of the ultraportable variety. Unless they want to watch a good DVD, users seem more content shuffling data around on USB thumb drives, SD cards, and through the Internet.
That’s gotten us thinking. Let’s fast forward five years to 2014—what type of removable storage will be the most popular then? TR editors put their money on SD cards and "the cloud," but we’re curious to see what our readers think. Good thing we have that nice poll area on our front page! We’ve updated it with a slightly differently formulated version of the same question, and you can go ahead and vote now. Alternatively, just scroll down and cast your vote here; it’ll be counted the same way.
Before we move on, we should observe a minute of silence in memory of our previous poll. It departed from our front page just 94 votes shy of 6,000, having given TR readers an avenue to express their most sought-after product or development this year. The two most favored options were price cuts and Windows 7, but DirectX 11 graphics processors and beer were almost as popular. Surprisingly, though, not too many folks are all that hyped up about Lynnfield or Windows 7 ultraportables.