High Speed gets faster!
Don’t be left behind in the high speed connection world, infact its quite difficult in some ways to say that when we live in the UK with our overpriced under par broadband connections, we’re left behind across europe in terms of pricing and so behind in Network terms the Japanese must laugh at us. With 100mbps connections, yes that’s 100mb not 10 which you’d only be happy to receive, and low prices to match it puts the UK to shame. BT is only just rolling out their ADSL2 service across the UK and will take upto 2 years to complete!!! Meanwhile Mr Branson has his head screwed on taking the Virgin Media brand in the right direction, with 20mbps connections already available (although still rather expensive) 2008 will see the roll out of 50mbps connections that are reportedly tested and ready.
Putting the UK’s broadband issues aside, I seemed to quickly go off on a tangent there! What I really wanted to write about was the speed issues of external ports on our PC’s. If you have no idea what I’m on about, don’t let it put you off reading further thinking this is a geeky issue, it may get you thinking? I find it quite amazing the amount of PC’s I see which are still using the old USB 1.1 ports, they’re excruciatingly slow when using an external hard drive or flash drive, I could quite easily sit for an hour twiddling my thumbs waiting for a data transfer and drinking my customers tea or coffee, I prefer coffee, straight black, just in case we meet at some time. For those of us who have PC’s 4-5 years old you’ll have been used to the faster USB 2.0 ports. Like all things technology moves on, and USB has become the connection of choice, printers, flash drives, external hard drives, MP3 players all use USB, and you’ll even find hundreds if not thousands of novelty items using USB, cup warmers, lamps, fans!!!! But there is faster connections out there, many new PC’s are now coming through with the faster e-sata ports in the line up on the back, firewire has been around for many years mainly a favourite of Apple Mac users, but now making a come back on the PC side.
So what does the future hold for data ports and connecting your gadgets? Well USB 2.0 is the current champion but there’s new technologies knocking on the door, e-sata is the fast favourite for external hard drives and its available now, USB 3.0 is now just about finalised but won’t be making an appearance until 2010, with speeds matching e-sata, the main benefit of USB is running multiple peripherals from one port using a hub, unlike e-sata which is strictly a one-one connection, there’s also talk of a new firewire standard increasing speeds to once again match its competition, at one time firewire was talked about as a dead format.
If you’re looking to buy an external drive for more storage, don’t just think USB is the only way, take your time and look at the latest options, if you use a router you can even buy a drive that will connect to the router and all your PC’s within a home network can access it, that way if all your PC’s require more space it could save you some money rather than buying multiple drives.
And if you’re still using slow USB 1.1 then you could add extra ports with a USB 2.0 expansion card but really it could be time to upgrade your PC, if you do take the PC upgrade option, you know where to come 
Related posts:
- USB 3.0 is here!
- Pioneer Blu Ray Drives – Watch High Def Movies
- Include a Print Server! Please….
- Hi Speed Memory upgrades
