So long MiniDisc; don't slam the door on the way out

Is it finally the end of the road for the oft-maligned MiniDisc? It certainly seems that way, judging from the recent activity at the MiniDisc Community Forums. Though not exactly a hotbed of anti-MiniDisc activity, one member points out that at Sony's recent corporate strategy meeting there was no mention of the format, and it was also a no-show in the company's annual report, other than as an example of a dying format: "...consumer preferences shift from CD-based and MD-based products to those with flash memory and HDDs…" Given that Sony CEO Howard Stringer has pledged to eliminate up to 10,000 jobs, it doesn't seem like such a stretch to imagine that the MiniDisc division will fall to his ax. Let's just hope he takes the ATRAC format along with it—they did kill SonicStage, after all.