USB 3.0 might not be the sole reason that you run out and buy your next PC. But it will be a nice incentive. The successor to USB 2.0 — currently the world’s most popular peripheral connectivity standard — USB 3.0 is faster and more versatile than USB 2.0. And it’s beginning to show up now. Here’s what’s in store.
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Speed
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Marketed as SuperSpeed USB, the new USB 3.0 standard is not just fast. It’s very fast. Able to pump data at 5 Gigabits per second (Gb/s), it outperforms the Serial ATA interface that’s used to connect most hard drives to computer systems today. That means it’s more than capable of allowing you to get the maximum data transfer rate from today’s hard drives — even from today’s solid state hard drives.
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USB 2.0, by comparison, moves data at a comparatively slow 480 Megabits per second (Mb/s). That makes USB 3.0 about 10 times faster than USB 2.0, at least on paper. In practice, early adopters of USB 3.0 gear reports data transfer rates that are closer to 3 times faster than USB 2.0. Still, that’s a hefty increase — and enough to make those who regularly transfer large amounts of data think seriously about upgrading.
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Perhaps even more exciting than the sheer performance improvements of USB 3.0 over USB 2.0 and other connectivity standards is that fact that USB 3.0 can operate in what’s known as full duplex, or bi-directional, mode: it can receive instructions or data at the same time that it sends them. USB 2.0 cannot. That capability will further enhance USB 3.0’s usefulness, especially with devices that both send and receive a lot of data, such as audio interfaces.
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Compatibility
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The USB 3.0 standard is fully backward compatible, so your existing USB devices will work when plugged into USB 3.0 ports. Similarly,…