That's funny!
Roland, E-mu and even AkAI have released hardware samples not all that
long ago.
I personally prefer soft samplers and samplecards. I've been using samplecell cards for like 10 years and nowadays I switched to using an EXS24 sampler.
Even though I always say that I hate mouse clicking; when it comes down to sample editing mouse clicking beats the hell out of doing SCSI, USB and MIDI sample dumps or having to deal with the front panel displays!

-ED-