I remember when I first experienced USB, it was with my iMac DV back in 2000. I remember being so happy about it being hot-swap capable, and having such high speeds. Back then it was USB 1.1 (12 mega bits per second at full speed). After USB 2.0 (480 megabits per second at high speed) came out a few years ago I overjoyed, for I no longer had to wait 20 minutes to transfer a file to my external hard drive.

Hold on to you seat, because soon the newest USB compliance is to be released. This compliance will be designated USB 3.0, and will feature speeds of up to 4.8 GIGABITS per second. If you didn’t catch that, the previous speed was 480 megabits. 4.8 Giga bits is the equivalent to 4800 megabits, which is a ridiculous amount more!

Unfortunately, this technology won’t be released until sometime later this year, with commercial products coming out in 2009 or 2010. So if you can, hold off on getting that new computer until it is equipped with USB 3.0. I know I am, in the mean time I’ll just get a MacBook Pro

-Jameson