Sure beats the old USB 1.1 speeds... but I think manufactures should have adopted firewire a while ago cuz its been out a while and it was much faster than USB 1.1. But I guess Apple owned it or something so they couldn't?

Anyhow, 480mbps is sweet, my Dell won't even reach those speeds, hehe

Does anyone here actually have a usb2 device? No? then why are you people complaining? If you buy a usb device it comes with usb2 drivers with it, so whats the big deal.

When windows 95 came out, it did not support usb. usb support was added to osr2, which came out in 1996. The reason why it wasnt in win95 originally was because there were very few devices using it, and the standards were changing. If youve bought a usb device made after 1997, you have to get win98 or higher, because the standards have changed so much. It's probably gonna be the same for winxp, after a couple years you might need to upgrade because the standards for usb2 have changed so much.

The point is microsoft does not want unhappy people. If ms shipped very buggy usb2 drivers in winxp, people would have a bad experience and blame it on ms. People dont care if something is new, they want it to work the first time. People wouldnt be happy if ms released a beta OS, just like people wouldnt be happy if ms released a beta driver. It's the same reason why ms digitally signs drivers in xp. Sure you can install a unsigned driver in xp, but you still get a warning. This sets peoples expectations that this might not work, so if the driver does hose the system, they knew it might be coming. The whole point is setting the customers expectations.

But ms cant make everyone happy. If you wanna complain, go right ahead i wont be listening ;)

-gosh

"Does anyone here actually have a usb2 device? No?"

Check my post, hehe....

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

i do... epson 2450 scanner

I don't really see the point of that much bandwidth for a scanner, but I guess it would keep that bus from dropping down to 1.1 and slowing other devices

When you have a 5 minute difference in wait time on high resolution scans, than you would quickly realize the point of having high bandwith for scanners. I don't know if you do scan, but a pic at 150-300 dpi on usb 1 will be fine, but if you try to scan a pic at 1200, 2400, and up, you'll realize the importance of having much bandwith. Some of the pics I scan are about 1 GB in size uncompressed so... there you go.

i do too. a usb 2.0 80 gig harddrive. It rocks.

I bought myself (well, the store, hehe) a Pacific Digital external USB burner last night. It comes with an USB 2.0 PCI card. Installed it under WinXP Pro, as I already had USB 2.0 drivers from www.xp-erience.org, and the sucker works GREAT! For a difference in speed: USB 1.1 speeds are 4x4x8, while USB 2.0 speeds are 24x10x40!!
Burns a 700meg CD in under 5 minutes!

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

This Pacific Digital using USB2.0 burned 638meg in 3 Minutes, 5 seconds. Not to shabby, eh? And this is running under WinXP Pro.

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

Update: the Linux version Fewt told me about a bit further down, sees my USB 2.0 burner, but I have YET to get it to *view* a CD in it....maybe after all the updates it is downloading, it may work a bit better. (nothing like seeing 2 cdrom drives, and only able to use one!)

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

Ahh, but you can read a CDrom with it now can't you? (Did you have to recompile a kernel?)

heh heh

Well, after getting the 1.5 hour download worth of updates (that's across a cable connection!) and a reboot, I can actually read a cd now- just will wait until later to see if I can burn to it from Linux yet.
One annoyance I have found already, though: it gets hard to unmount and eject a CD at times!

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

Sure, you may have needed updates, but do you really think it would have taken that long if the servers weren't clogged? I downloaded the ISO's at 350KBps each. Like any O/S you will need to patch things. ICQ me again if you have problems burning, I don't expect you will, it picked my burner right up.

i looked on the windows updates this morning and i don't see the updates

You wont. Unless you have a USB 2.0 Controler in your computer.

Too bad they didn't have it first (Hmm, where have I heard this before, oh yeah, ITANIUM!)

http://www.newsforge.com...1311256&mode=thread

Napster was first too...

OH YEAH! ;-)

I don't get it. Microsoft's "USB 2.0 support entered beta last summer" while Linux came out with beta support half a year later. Yet it's first. Interesting.

This is a good, good, good, good thing.

Karl - kksheppard@ucsd.edu

It should be mentioned, when Itanium support was added to Linux, Itanium-based machines weren't even on the market... Microsoft released their Windows 2000 and Windows XP Itanium editions when the machine was released, which is a lot more practical, and makes a lot more sense.

When I was at Intel, I worked and developed code for Windows XP for Itanium. It's still in development tests now. I also worked on the Linux kernel 2.4 for Itanium and let me say that Itanium rocked when it's optimized for it.

fewt, what's wrong with you, what do usb drivers have to do with how a company inovates?

And what does it matter who was first? ms could have released their drivers months ago, but instead it chose to wait and make sure that they were fully compatible with the hardware and didn't have any bugs. in my opinion, it's a good thing.

and besides, let's try to recall how long it took for linux to get any decent support for the original usb spec working. win98 had usb fully working three years before 2.4 came out with full support.

When USB became useful, Linux supported it. hell, 95C supported USB, but I wouldn't dare plug a USB device into it.

"when USB became useful" ahem, right, and in your opinion it wasn't useful until 2001?

but besides, usb 2.0 won't be "useful" (at least to what your idea of the word seems to be) for another couple of years, so why do we see you running around like a chicken with your head off screaming how linux released drivers a month ahead of ms and then saying that it's proof of ms’s inability to innovate?

hypocrisy or double standards.... you decide

Fact, there was a working implementation in a public linux kernel first. How am I possibly being hipocritical? Please do enlighten me.

Point of View, Fewt. Besides, I don't think it matters who came out with it first, but who's works better? Maybe I'll try putting RedHat 7.1 on another drive again, to see if it will actually work (assuming I don't have to buy/download another version of Linux).

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

Go get this one, you can download and burn off all 4 CD's..

http://www.lycoris.com

I've been toying with it, it seems pretty solid. It's geared towards ex Windows users it appears.

"Fact, there was a working implementation in a public linux kernel first."

"Working implementation" is one thing - win95 had that too. "Working" is very different from "fully working".

As for facts, in the words of the USB guide at www.linux-usb.org (home of the Linux USB Project, and touted as the “central point of information for USB support under Linux.”), "You need a late version kernel [to use USB]. Kernel versions 2.2.7 and later contain the USB code." [http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/c122.html]. And another fact, 2.2.7 was released on April 28, 1999. Far from "fully working", it is years behind win95 OSR2.

As for fully-working, linux-usb.org recommends at least 2.2.18 (December 10, 2000... whoa that's kinda late, win98 precedes it by two and a half years), but even that isn’t too good, so you should really go for 2.4, which was released on January 4, 2001 (a year after win2k was released with a flawless USB implementation). But wait a minute… 2001??? That’s right, it wasn’t until 2001 that USB could have been experienced under linux in its full glory. On top of that, linux-usb.org adds the following gem, “USB code [under linux] is in fairly early development.” At least they’re honest.

Now that the facts have been established, it is true that ‘hypocrisy’ is not the most appropriate and accurate word that I could have used, but ‘double standards’ describes your attitude perfectly.

P.S. And just so that you don’t trying to argue over what constitutes “full glory”, 2.2 didn’t support usb-storage.

And jamwheat, as for “who’s works better”, let’s just say that in winxp, the following set-up steps are mandatory following the plug-in of a USB device (assuming no previous configuration of windows) --

Step 1: wait for little bubble to pop up in the lower right corner of the screen confirming driver installation and availability of the device for use. (Assuming windows has the driver, and it almost always does. If not, just tell the window that appears to use a driver that you’ve downloaded.)

Step 2: commence enjoyment, no restart or further configuration is necessary.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy in linux. Let me quote the second paragraph (the first having quoted earlier describing kernel requirements) of the section entitled “How to get USB devices working under Linux – Basic USB Configuration” of the USB Guide at linux-usb.org [http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/c122.html] –

“You need to configure USB into your kernel. Use of make menuconfig is recommended. Under USB support, you need to select Support for USB. You also need to select either UHCI (Intel PIIX4, VIA, ...) support, UHCI Alternate Driver (JE) support or OHCI-HCD (Compaq, iMacs, OPTi, SiS, ALi, ...) support. Which one you select is dependent on what kind of motherboard or adapter you have. Intel and Via motherboards, and Via-based adapters are UHCI, and you can use either of the two UHCI drivers - there seems to be little user visible difference between them. Ali and SiS chipsets, Compaq and NEC motherboards, iMacs and any adapter using Opti chips (just about all of them) are OHCI, and you should use OHCI-HCD. If you do not know what kind of controller to choose, check your motherboard documentation. You can also look at /proc/pci for a hint - if the USB entry is of the form 0xHHHH, where HHHH are hex digits (e.g. something like I/O at 0xe400), then it is UHCI. If it is of the form 32 bit memory at 0xHH000000, where HH are hex digits (e.g. something like 32 bit memory at 0xee000000), then it is OHCI. Failing that, just try both.”

Have fun :)

At least it seems that the average linux user is able to hold a right to claim that he’s fairly intelligent – or perhaps just really good at following directions. Either way, the thing goes on for pages.

Yeah, Win95 had USB *2.0* support, ok dumba**. USB support is compiled into every distribution on the market today, nice attempt to discredit it, by claiming that it "requires you to recompile your kernel" but it's just not working. As for turning it on, if you happen to find a kernel that doesn't have it, turning it on is as simple as flagging a check box and typing three commands. You forget WinXP also offers that wonderful royalty hasn't been paid yet notice before your junk works. So they finally got hardware support right, how many releases/years did that take?

Dang, Fewt, give it a rest ;-)
Enough with this "hasn't paid MS royalty" stuff. It just means the drivers haven't been certified by MS, that's all- nothing about "royalties being paid".
Plus, the post Alex made was about USB, not "USB 2.0".

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

Well, I wasn’t going to make any personal attacks, but since you started, I must say you do need a little help in reading comprehension. Firstly, what exactly in my language made you think that I was talking about USB 2.0 support in win95? If by “working implementation” you had meant implementation of USB 2.0, then it’s your fault for not being specific because I assumed by the course of discussion and the fact that my previous post addressed the fact that USB appeared in windows first, that you too were talk about USB 1.

As for my supposed comment on recompiling the kernel, I have no idea what the hell happened there, but it seems that you’re seeing things because I didn’t mention the word ‘recompile’ once in my entire post (I even did a search to make sure). Seems a little funny you were able to quote me. (Maybe the word “configure” threw you off – but in that case your condition would have to be dyslexia).

And the thing is that after you actually activate the USB support (be it by inputting some three cryptic commands), you must then wrestle getting the device to actually work. The USB Guide on linux-usb.org (again, don’t forget, THE authority on USB under Linux) actually has the following heading for one of the sections of the page which details USB camera installation: “Sanity Checking”. No joke, http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/x405.html (scroll down half-way to see it). I love these guys, at least they have a great sense of humor. At the end of the section, when the Guide is telling you how to check if the computer detected the new camera device, they write, “If you don't see that, then the troubleshooting gets interesting.” lol, I’m sure. Anyway, if windows has “finally got hardware support right,” where does that leave Linux? You didn’t even have to do so much work under DOS, much less win98 which was quite b****y about device installation itself. And as for “how many releases/years did that take?”, the answer seems to be: much fewer than it will take Linux.

And as for your complaint about Windows being commercial software (you can’t really blame it for trying to enforce it), well I have to say that you get what you pay for.

Oh, btw, if you were talking about driver signing by the “royalty hasn’t been paid yet” comment, then I must say that driver quality control is a VERY good thing, especially considering you can always install the driver anyway. I have had too many horrible experiences with s***ty drivers, especially those made by the company Efficient Networks, makers of the ‘SpeedStream’ broadband products. NEVER BUY THEM. It took me a month to finally realize how to install the driver under winme (which I spent without dsl) and then I finally uncovered deep on their website that there is a conflict with my soundblaster driver. And then when I moved to win2k, the damn crap crashed my comp every single day. Under winxp, the driver installation crashed half way (I was using win2k drivers) but miraculously my comp worked without crashes (something quite amazing). Eventually I got Verizon to send me a different modem, and I haven’t been happier since. If Microsoft can crack their nuts so that they can make decent drivers, then I am only going to be happier.

Yo, Fewt: this from linux-usb.org about USB 2.0
"Q: Does Linux talk to USB 2.0 devices?

A: Yes, in two ways. First the backward-compatible way: all high speed (480 Mbit/sec) devices can be used at full speed (12 Mbit/sec) in all current Linux kernels. Second if you have the EHCI driver, and a USB 2.0 host controller (EHCI, currently available as add-on PCI cards) then you can use these devices at high speed. ECHI support is available in the Linux 2.5 development kernels, and a patch is available to make 2.4 kernels support this. At this writing the EHCI driver is labeled "experimental".

This means I have to find updates and patches to get my PCI USB 2.0 card to work with "experimental" drivers. I don't concider that as Linux supporting it "first".

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

Gee, I don't have problems like that, sure it may be a little more difficult to install if it's not already there, but I've never seen one crash my entire computer (unless it was video related, and that will happen on any platform), or conflict with another driver. :-P