News USB 2.0 is 25 years old today — the interface standard that changed the world

[Admin]

USB 2.0 introduced 480 Mbps transfer speeds in 2000, making it one of the fastest ways of moving data between devices at its time.

USB 2.0 is 25 years old today — the interface standard that changed the world : Read more

 

[punkncat]

Wow, if I didn't already feel old....

IMO the USB C standard has been the biggest improvement in that line. Not for speed (in spite of being fast) but the fact that you don't have to try and plug it in three times to have the slot correct. Never seemed to get it the first time.

 

[Mytilus]

Good point

 

[Energy96]

Wow, if I didn't already feel old....

IMO the USB C standard has been the biggest improvement in that line. Not for speed (in spite of being fast) but the fact that you don't have to try and plug it in three times to have the slot correct. Never seemed to get it the first time.

100%
Original design was terrible.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Wow, if I didn't already feel old....

IMO the USB C standard has been the biggest improvement in that line. Not for speed (in spite of being fast) but the fact that you don't have to try and plug it in three times to have the slot correct. Never seemed to get it the first time.

USB-C can still be USB 2.0, as is often the case with cables primarily intended to charge a phone or laptop.

While C is the biggest improvement in the connector, and should have been that way from the beginning, the biggest detriment to USB has been the multitude of sizes, specs, and naming conventions paired with the lack of officially mandated speeds imprinted onto the cable itself, something they had the opportunity to change with USB-C, but decided not to.

 

[stonecarver]

USB has been one of the biggest welcomes I ever instantly embraced in this PC journey, gone were the huge parallel port printer cables

 

[usertests]

IMO the USB C standard has been the biggest improvement in that line. Not for speed (in spite of being fast) but the fact that you don't have to try and plug it in three times to have the slot correct. Never seemed to get it the first time.

I only recently started charging a laptop, phone, and tablet with the same USB-C charger, and boy is that convenient.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I only recently started charging a laptop, phone, and tablet with the same USB-C charger, and boy is that convenient.

Honestly it's one of the reasons I'm going to have trouble justifying a laptop with more than 100w of power requirements (currently mine requires just 65w). The ease of carrying one compact, flat, multi-port GaN charger for 4 devices is so nice.

 

[wwenze1]

Price is the limiting factor. USB3 hubs still cost at least $8~$10. Cables are also expensive. Getting >1GHz requires twisted pairs (since USB is using twisted pairs) that are not made in some guy's backyard.

 

[dimar]

Asus Pro motherboards still have the parallel serial and PS/2 plugs. The only port that's truly gone that I remember using in the past was PC AT for keyboard.

 

[Moonstick2]

This gave me such a flashback to when I bought a Maxtor OneTouch 160 GB for backups and it took ages. I worked out that Win 98SE was running USB1.1 only and tracked down USB2 drivers for my motherboard. Installed them and ran a new backup and I still remember so clearly now my astonishment at the jump in speed. This is when five years before I'd have been backing up by disk-spanning across 3.5" floppies, and the year before burning to CD-Rs.

 

[AkroZ]

IMO the USB C standard has been the biggest improvement in that line. Not for speed (in spite of being fast) but the fact that you don't have to try and plug it in three times to have the slot correct. Never seemed to get it the first time.

It is said that initially Type-A should have been plugable in both ways, but Intel is to blame to make it only one way, probably to reduce manufacturing costs.

USB 1.0, released in 1996 with only 1.5 Mbit/s: replace PS/2 ports for mouse/keyboard, serial and parallel ports for printer and joystick, gamepad and other periperals.
USB 1.1, released in 1998 with 12 Mbit/s: firsts usb keys and mp3 players.
USB 2.0, released in 2000 with 480Mbit/s: external drives.
USB 3.2 Gen 1x1, released in 2008 with 5Gbit/s

USB keys replaced floppy disks in 1998, but CD or LAN was the bests to transfer big files, only latter with USB 2.0 adopted USB keys make it more easy to transfer files. But the release of USB 2.0 was not particularly noteworthy as many devices remained in USB 1.1. It's like with USB Type-C release, all devices were with a USB 2.0 controller and nowadays many devices remains with USB 2 because they don't need the speed of USB 3.

 

[ravewulf]

USB 2.0 had a higher theoretical bandwidth than FireWire 400 but, in practice, FireWire was faster thanks to less overhead

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-firewire-esata,2534-6.html