Are you sick of USB 2.0 yet? According to Wikipedia it was released over 8 years ago (April 2000). Of course there's always a lag period between when things are released and when they are freely and cheaply available to the masses but that can't have been more than a year.Well, last week, Intel gave AMD, nVidia and others what they'd been hanging out for: 90% complete USB 3.0 controller specifications. Today Engadget is reporting on a detailed analysis of those specs by MaximumPC which tells you just what you'll be getting in your USB 3.0 kit.
"The highlights include assurance that USB 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 and that it'll provide transfer rates up to ten times more than USB 2.0's 480Mbps limit (that's 4.8Gbps). Furthermore, we're told that uploads and downloads are kept on separate lanes, the cables are thicker, it will charge more devices more quickly, and it will be much more mindful of energy waste."
The bad news is that it's going to be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0... yes, that's bad news. It means we're still stuck with that rediculous rectangular plug. Seriously, who designed that thing? Make it an irregular shape so we don't have to go crawling under desks just to see if it's the right way round. I'm sure there's a "Murphy's Law" that dictates that you will always get the plug upside down on your first attempt, something similar to the butter-side-down Tumbling Toast theory.
Anyway, if we're lucky, by next year we'll be seeing some crazy 4.8Gbps transfer speeds from our portable devices... maybe a nice 512GB SSD or something.
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