Bill Watkins, the plain talking chief executive of storage giant Seagate, was in the UK this week - don't worry, he told us that he had already voted - informing the assembled crowds at a posh London hotel about how confident he was for the future, how much market share his firm owns, and how nearly every other storage company is beholden to him.

This is a firm that expects to have sold 2 billion drives within a few years, has good revenue growth and is firmly winning the hearts and minds of consumers. So how does it hand out copies of its presentation to journalists? On bleeding-edge technology? A flashy new storage drive loaded with encryption software and gadgetry?

Not quite. Instead we have in our hands a shiny not-so-new piece of kit. It is silver and circular and has the legend "Imation CD-R" burned into it.



Welcome to the new world.