At WinHEC, Gates said a fond goodbye to the floppy disk. "For the first time, I can say that the floppy disk is dead." The future is USB flash, which, according to industry reports, is expected to ship in volume of between 67 million and 120 million drives in 2005. Microsoft is also promoting the drives as a method for simple configuration of wireless network security. The only problem is that they are too easy to lose.