Registered: May 2000
Location: Cleveland, Ohio 44067
Posts: 242

Question about USB

I see more talk about USB 2.0 and how it will be sooo much faster than USB 1.1. My question is this :

Is upgrading a question of
A)New Software
B)New USB ports on my computer
C)New peripherals

In other words, can my Digital Camera and Visor cradle be updated to use 2.0 and its higher speed at some point or are they stuck using 1.1?

Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 3034

Re: Question about USB

Originally posted by maddog:
I see more talk about USB 2.0 and how it will be sooo much faster than USB 1.1. My question is this :

Is upgrading a question of
A)New Software

Yes, new drivers would be needed, but chances are that...

B)New USB ports on my computer

...this would address it. You'd more than likely need to add a new card and chances are that it would come with new drivers.

C)New peripherals

Yes and no. Most of your older USB devices should still work, but to get the full speed advantages, you'd need 2.0 peripherals.

Registered: May 2000
Location: Cleveland, Ohio 44067
Posts: 242

Does that mean...

If you are thinking about a camera or something, now is a bad time to buy and one should wait for 2.0 to be available?

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 714

Well, your camera will most likely use a flash card such as Smart Media or Compact Flash. These devices have their own limitations on how fast they can transfer data and I believe they're really only capable of about USB 1.0 speeds, so 2.0 would add little speed benefit. If you wanted USB 2.0 later on, you could always purchase an external card reader.

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Matt Nichols
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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Midwest
Posts: 232

USB 2.0 is supposed to support USB 1.0 devices, but at 1.0 speeds. So if your new computer has USB 2.0 ports, any USB product should work with it. I have found USB 1.0 to be plenty fast for my Visor and new digital camera. My Olympus 510Z camera plugs directly into the USB port of my computer, and Win98se sees it as a removable disk. There are also USB card readers available, which you insert your media card into to get it onto the computer. Copying images too and from my camera using USB 1.0 speeds seems nearly as fast as copying the same files around my hard drive.

My point? Don't put off getting devices because they don't support USB 2.0. USB 1.0 is fine for most things. If it's a device that uses compact flash or smartmedia cards, there will undoubtably be new USB 2.0 card readers available. If you're interested in digital video, then firewire is available right now, and pretty well debugged. It has the bandwidth to handle huge data transfers quickly.

I like my USB1.0

Dave ;-)

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Posts: 415

USB 2.0? I'm not to excited about it myself, after reading a profanity filled synopsis by one of the development team members:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/19735.html

Personally, I'd like to see some firewire (ie 1394) action go down in the visor. My brother's G4 Cube has that, and he can stream live video and sound from his mini DV camera. It's quite amazingly fast.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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All current USB peripherals should work with USB 2.0. Some will see more benefits than others, but probably just the peripherals optimized for USB 2.0 will see the full benefits.

I really like the USB idea. Serial and Parallel are such pain.

Registered: May 2000
Location: Cleveland, Ohio 44067
Posts: 242

I don't agree

I think the profanity is unnecessary and takes away from his professionalism. Makes it difficult to believe anything he says. He sounds more like a bitter former employee rather than an objective critic.

How about some detail and facts to back up his opinion rather than four letter words. Goes a long way towards credibility.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 434

If you want to buy something now that is USB 1, then just buy it, because:

1) USB 2 will be "just around the corner" for sometime to come, as it has been for the last year.

2) USB 2 *should* be compatible with USB 1 devices (at least most). You shouldn't need new hardware. Software - maybe.

3) Current devices PDA-like devices don't even make use of the full USB bandwidth if I remember correctly, and I doubt "just around the corner" ones will make use of the full USB 2 bandwidth either.

4) Media devices like cameras are probably better off using card readers instead anyway, since support from the camera companies for any form of USB is mediocre at best.

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

quote:

---

Originally posted by thorin
Personally, I'd like to see some firewire (ie 1394) action go down in the visor. My brother's G4 Cube has that, and he can stream live video and sound from his mini DV camera. It's quite amazingly fast.

---

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James Hromadka
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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
Posts: 708

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Microsoft say they are not even going to support USB2.0? I thought they made that announcement when they announced they would not include support for BlueTooth. They were going to go with FireWire as the standard.

Of course, this is only relevent to Windows users.

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Originally posted by GSR13:
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Microsoft say they are not even going to support USB2.0? [...]

They did say that, but, as usual, consumer pressure has caused them to backpedal. If it can't make it into the initial release, it'll be an add-on soon after release. An article is here.

Registered: Oct 2000
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I don't think that they really backpedaled so much as restated what they originally said. The original statement from MS basically said that they were not supporting USB2 in the initial release of XP because there was not enough hardware for them to do a decent reference driver. They said that when there was, they would add support.

This still holds true.

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
Posts: 708

Thanks for the clarification guys.

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Originally posted by bradhaak:
I don't think that they really backpedaled so much as restated what they originally said. The original statement from MS basically said that they were not supporting USB2 in the initial release of XP because there was not enough hardware for them to do a decent reference driver. They said that when there was, they would add support.

This still holds true.

Not unless CNet was lying here. That says pretty unequivocally that USB 2.0 would not be included period. Now it might or might not.

Registered: Oct 2000
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quote:

---

Originally posted by Toby
Originally posted by bradhaak:
I don't think that they really backpedaled so much as restated what they originally said. The original statement from MS basically said that they were not supporting USB2 in the initial release of XP because there was not enough hardware for them to do a decent reference driver. They said that when there was, they would add support.

This still holds true.

Not unless CNet was lying here. That says pretty unequivocally that USB 2.0 would not be included period. Now it might or might not.

---

Last edited by bradhaak on 07-11-2001 at 05:30 PM

Registered: Jul 2000
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Originally posted by bradhaak:
CNet is not who I would recommend for clear accurate journalism.

Perhaps not, but I'd hardly trust a Microsoft spinmeister any further.

This is an exerpt from a clarification to MSs original press statement on USB 2.0. This was posted on April 23.

The fact that a 'clarification' was even needed suggests that something wasn't stated clearly. Unfortunately, the 'clarification' didn't link back to the original statement, so...

You can see the full statement here.

Yeah, that's nice, but it doesn't really clear anything up. To do that would require a link to the original statement that caused all the stir.

Registered: Oct 2000
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Toby, read the article that you originally quoted. It contains a quote from MS that says that they are not including support because the hardware isn't ready.

quote:

---

"USB 2.0 support will not be included in the (final) version of Windows XP due to the fact that there is not a sufficient array of production-quality devices to test against," she wrote in an e-mail. "Microsoft will not ship support for a standard that they can't guarantee a great user experience on."

---

There is nothing here that says that MS won't support USB 2.0 once there is a reasonable amount of hardware available. This is exactly what MS restated in their clarification a few days later. Historically this has been true of previous interfaces and MS support including USB 1.0. Nothing new here.

I don't like MS any more than it appears that you do, but be fair.

BTW - the anecdote at the end of the story about the failed scanner was a product that I was working on. I worked on the USB drivers and installation. It was hilarious when it happened but we were still pretty freaked out. It turned out the the host adapter on the PC was screwed up.

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Originally posted by bradhaak:
Toby, read the article that you originally quoted.

I did. I didn't say that I bought into all of the hype about Microsoft, pro or con. The wherefores and what ifs had nothing to do with what I said. Their original statement which I was addressing was only that supposedly USB 2.0 support was not going to be included in the original shipping version of XP. Now it might or might not be. No matter what the reasoning behind it, to go from "it will not be included" to "it might be included" or "it will be included" is a bit of backpedalling.

I don't like MS any more than it appears that you do, but be fair.

I am being fair. If they made a statement that USB 2.0 would not be included in XP when it shipped (as stated in the CNet article), then later changed that, it's a backpedal. All things considered, it's an innocuous one (compared to say... the licensing scheme stirs), but I don't see how it's unfair to consider it such.

Registered: Oct 2000
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Then we disagree and I think that your point of view on this is wrong and unreasonable.

Not a big deal, but from your point of view, if MS made a statement a year ago that USB 2.0 support would be present based on commitments from IHVs that sufficient hardware would be available to make the feature possible, Than MS is somehow the one at fault and the one backpedalling when the promised hardware doesn't materialize. At this point MS had no choice but to remove the feature. The irresponsible thing would have been to release a set of drivers that hadn't been tested against real-world products.

The people that did the backpedalling were the hardware companies that didn't meet their delivery commitments.

If MS had included incompatible, incomplete drivers, the masses (possibly including you) would have been castigating MS for releasing software prematurely because obviously there weren't enough devices out there to write a reasonable set of drivers for USB 2.0 and why didn't MS hold off on support until a decent level of compatibility could be guaranteed.

Last edited by bradhaak on 07-11-2001 at 09:45 PM