Re: Grab your crystal balls: is USB 2 in my future

David C. <shamino@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Phil Stripling <philip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

I'm looking at a portable storage device that comes only with USB 2.

_only_? Meaning you would explicitly reject a device that has both
FireWire and USB 2?

So here's my quandary. I can get a USB 2 PCI card for my dual 1-Gig G3
tower that will let me connect the device at the necessary speed in
lieu of FireWire.

I assume you meant to say G4. There never was a dual 1GHz G3 Mac.
I thought so too, but he did mention it twice..

And yes, you can. I have one in mine (a Belkin F5U220.) I use it with
a SanDisk Cruzer Micro (flash drive), my iPod, and my monitor (which has
a built-in memory-card reader.) Works fine (but don't try to put the
computer to sleep while anything is attached - that causes it problems.)
Then the problem lies with your flash drive, my Belkin F5U220 does not
have sleep mode problems (tip from Greg Weston, which is why I bought
it).
My wife has an older iMac with USB 1, and we have an old iBook with
USB 1.

These are going to be slow unless your storage device supports
FireWire. No way around that.

My only expandable computer is the G3 tower. Is Apple going to USB 2
in the future?

Already gone there. All G5 systems have USB 2.0 ports. Recent G4
systems (iBooks, PowerBooks and minis) do too. As do the new Intel
systems.

Will I need to continue buying expandable Macs so I can get transfer
the USB 2 card as I go along?

Transferring the card will not be possible. New PowerMacs (the
dual-core G5 systems and probably the future Intel models) are using PCI
Express, which is incompatible with PCI cards.

But it won't matter, because USB 2 is already present.

Or does Apple support USB 2 in current devices? Are there going to be
other USB 2-only devices in my future, and FireWire is going to go the
way of NuBus, ADB, et als.?

I still don't know why you have this thing about "only". While it is
true that modern iPods don't support FireWire anymore, there are plenty
of devices (especially hard drives and optical drives) that come with FW
(usually sporting both FW and USB.) Look around a little and don't
purchase the first thing you see and you should be able to get a device
that works with both interfacs.

As for FW going away, I don't think so. Certain things (like video
cameras) work much better over FW, and often don't even have USB
support.
It did look like Apple were dropping FW, but I think that was just to
make the iPod even more appealing to the (PC) masses, where FW isnt that
popular.

RL
.

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