Speed is great, but the sad thing is that Microsoft now gets to pull out what I suspect is their old hardware-versus-OS-upgrade-lockstep cash cow playbook:
Step 1: Push new industry standard hardware device protocol.
Step 2: Offer free help to hardware manufacturers (both for PCs and peripherals) to encourage them to add the new connector.
Step 3: Strong-arm PC manufacturers to remove old hardware connectors, using carrot-and-stick approach with the terms of their OEM Windows license deals.
Step 4: Sweet talk peripherals manufacturers, bribing them with offers of co-advertising, cross promotion, acceleration of driver development, delaying of driver development for intransigent competitors, and possibly wads of cash, to convince them to drop old hardware connector from their products, so anyone buying a mouse, keyboard, digital camera, scanner, printer, joystick, or anything else, will need an operating system that supports the new hardware.
Step 5: Roll out new operating system (Windows Menudo, or whatever crap name they give it) that supports both new and old connectors
Step 6: Deliberately refrain from publishing simple patch for old operating system that would provide compatibility with new hardware.
Step 7: If possible, put in place technical and legal mechanisms to prevent or impede third parties from adding compatibility with new hardware to old operating system.
Step 8: Sit back and watch the dollars come in, as everyone is forced to upgrade to Windows Menudo.
USB is a good example. They added support for it to Windows 2000, and refrained from updating Windows NT to support it. By some odd coincidence (NOT), all the new retail non-USB products (including ones that worked perfectly fine with the old connections -- mice, keyboards, webcams, printers, etc.) disappeared from the market overnight, leaving consumers unable to buy anything but USB, even if they wanted to pay good money. This was a major pain point for me for a long time, and is thus seared into my memory, because NT was working great and I did not need Windows 2000, except for USB support.
It also has better power output, 900 milliamps compared to 100 milliamps with USB 2.0. That means up to four devices can be charged from a single USB port and charged faster.
This is good news - although afaik, USB2.0 actually delivers up to 500mA (in units of 100mA).
Either way, will be nice to finally have a contender for the universal charger.
USB 1.1/2.0 is required to deliver 100 mA per port, but may deliver up to 500 mA. Devices state their power requirements (in units of 1 or 2 mA, IIRC) during enumeration, which always runs at 100 mA, and the host computer says yea or nay.
And yes, the USB spec actually measures "power" in "milliamps".
I wonder which will happen first... USB 3.0 becomes standard or they finally stop putting PS/2, serial, and parallel ports on the motherboard backplate?
USB 3.0 will probably win, but I can dream can't I?
I like my PS/2 port thank you very much. I also understand that there are some useful uses of the serial ports still today, granted mostly in hardware hacking. Though I guess I could see the serial port become a pci card.
The best keyboard I've ever used is a beige (Compaq Partno 269513-006, google shows that it might still be available). It's heavy, must weigh like 2 or 3 lbs., and I didn't use it for a long time because it was awful dirty. Dishwasher fixed that. PS/2 connector of course, I have a PS/2-female-to-USB that I'm holding on to for when I get a machine without a PS/2 port.
I've had mixed luck with USB-serial ports. Some of them work well and some of them are only recognized well on some machines.
You mean 2.5". And those enclosures violate the spec in more than one way: first of all, pretty much all drives require a spin-up current of around 1000 mA, which is twice what current USB can provide. Secondly, the enclosures don't appear to even try to "ask for" that much power, especially not the (extremely non-standard) "Y-cable" solutions. I don't know anyone who's fried their USB ports with one of those things, but I certainly stay away from them.
To answer the original question: if they bring out a drive + bridge logic that consumes less than 900mA on spin-up (or a bridge board with a sufficiently big capacitor to cross the spin-up period) then yes.
Step 1: Push new industry standard hardware device protocol.
Step 2: Offer free help to hardware manufacturers (both for PCs and peripherals) to encourage them to add the new connector.
Step 3: Strong-arm PC manufacturers to remove old hardware connectors, using carrot-and-stick approach with the terms of their OEM Windows license deals.
Step 4: Sweet talk peripherals manufacturers, bribing them with offers of co-advertising, cross promotion, acceleration of driver development, delaying of driver development for intransigent competitors, and possibly wads of cash, to convince them to drop old hardware connector from their products, so anyone buying a mouse, keyboard, digital camera, scanner, printer, joystick, or anything else, will need an operating system that supports the new hardware.
Step 5: Roll out new operating system (Windows Menudo, or whatever crap name they give it) that supports both new and old connectors
Step 6: Deliberately refrain from publishing simple patch for old operating system that would provide compatibility with new hardware.
Step 7: If possible, put in place technical and legal mechanisms to prevent or impede third parties from adding compatibility with new hardware to old operating system.
Step 8: Sit back and watch the dollars come in, as everyone is forced to upgrade to Windows Menudo.