ForcaTech Blog

USB 3.0 was announced around a year ago. We were told it would be late 2009 before we actually saw ‘SuperSpeed’ USB 3.0 on the market and it looks like that estimate was pretty accurate. The Asus P6X58 motherboard boasts 3 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 3.0 ports. What is the difference? USB 3.0 ports are blue.

Pretty earthshattering huh? Well there–fortunately–is much more to it than that. Current USB 2.0 is rated at speeds of as high as 480Mbps. Real world you will see speeds as high as about 320Mbps. USB 3.0 is rated at 4.8Gbps! We will have to see how much of that we are actually able to utilize. To put this in perspective right now the fastest consumer level hard drive is rated at 3.0Gbps but most you see in retail stores are still 1.5Gbps.

What does this mean to you? Currently to drag over a 27GB HD movie via USB 2.0 you are looking at 15-20 minutes at least. With USB 3.0 you are going to be able to do that in less than 70 seconds. Can’t beat that. This opens up a whole new world of opportunities. For instance Red Box could just give everyone a USB drive instead of a DVD. You go to the Red Box, make your selection, plug in your thumb drive and boom in 10 seconds you have the 4GB DVD on your thumb drive with a 24 hour self destruct.

Or instead of buying PCs with hard drives everyone will just have a portable hard drive that is on their key chain or is simply their smartphone. When you go to work you just dock your thumb drive or iPhone and boot up. You leave for the day and go home and dock again and you can pick up where you left off.

This would not only be convenient but safe. You wouldn’t have to worry about someone getting onto your computer when you weren’t around because you would have all of the data with you. If we see this manifest itself in the future I want my commission.