Yamaha announces new models of Clavinova digital pianos. The Clavinova CVP 202, 204, 206, 208 and 210 continue the 200-series that came out in 2001 with expanded voice ROM, more user memory, and on all but the 202, USB connectivity. The USB port replaces the old proprietary "ToHost" cable that connected to a PC's serial port, itself an alternative to bulky MIDI cables and a MIDI interface (for Windows PC users, anyway). The USB interface also provides an alternative method to the 3-1/2" floppy disk for transferring files to and from the Clavinova's memory, which is almost enough to make me want to trade up. (Given recent pricing trends in U.S. Clavinova dealers, I'm sure the trade-up from a 207 to a 208 would be far too expensive to justify, though I'm curious what they'd offer.)

Floppy discs are increasingly becoming a pain; discs that I have sitting around never format properly on any of my remaining machines with floppy drives, and I can't tell if all of my drives are broken or if the media just has too many bad blocks to successfully take disk images.

The USB interface would allow Mac users to go MIDI-interfaceless, should Yamaha provide a Mac driver. (There's no info on the new models on Yamaha's web site yet, so supported OSes are uncertain.)

Unless you bother to figure out the on-board sequencing features of the CVP (which are actually quite impressive), you usually get around to doing all your sequencing through MIDI on a computer anyway, making the floppy drive moot. Then the difference between the USB port and a USB MIDI interface with MIDI cables is negligible. (Use an unsupported OS, and, well, I've covered that already.)