A Late Adopter's Guide To USB 3.0

crookedvulture writes "Even with cheap external hard drives, USB 3.0 offers roughly double the real-world transfer rates of old-school USB 2.0. It's no wonder, then, that USB 3.0 ports are available on most new systems. But what if you want to add USB 3.0 to an existing one? This article goes over what's required and explores the sort of performance improvements you can expect to see. Looks like a no-brainer for anyone who does a lot of transfers to external hard drives."

USB3 vs Intel Thunderbolt

[Speare]

I'm more interested in seeing what Thunderbolt does - it sounds like it's faster, but it all depends on what the device manufacturers settle on implementing.

Re:USB3 vs Intel Thunderbolt

[gabebear]

Conversely, USB3 drives won't get you any extra speed on most laptops since Intel still hasn't included a USB3 chipset in anything and few laptop manufacturers want the extra expense and power drain of a separate USB3 controller. Dell has been putting combined USB2/eSata ports on their laptops for years now so they aren't that hard to find on laptops.

Too early

[Darinbob]

It's entirely impossible to be a "late adopter" at this stage.

Re:USB3 vs Intel Thunderbolt

[skids]

Pathetically, the point won't be whether fw800 is faster, or carries more watts, or has better realtime/isochronus performance, or chose a better cable that runs longer and is more noise-free, or that fw drivers stacks won't have to be rewritten to deal with whatever new set of kludges has been added this time around.

The point will be that USB3 will be on everything by default, and fw800 will be very hard to find on a laptop, and everything with a fw800 port will be more expensive than the USB variant.

Really?

[hawguy]

Is this what Slashdot has come to? A how-to guide on how to add a new card to your computer!?

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