Ad Terras Per Aspera

The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is right now the most common serial peripheral bus in existence. Allowing all the most common devices to connect to your computer, to each other, through hubs, and now even wireless USB has become the dominant method of low bandwidth communications between devices and their peripherals.

However, USB is not without flaws, in fact, it has tons of issues that other less accepted standards have already solved, and USB has either not solved them or solved them only recently. One of those problems is that, although USB does provide electrical power to peripherals, it is rarely enough to run devices that suck juice like no tomorrow. Powered USB exists to solve this problem.

I will tell you why Powered USB will never be widely accepted, and also why we need it. However, to do so, this article is split into two three parts: the first part discusses the history of USB and previous peripheral ports, and why it it became widely accepted, the second part contains the meat of my argument on why Powered USB is both needed, yet failing to be accepted, and the third part describes a possible future USB 3 specification in detail.

This is part 2. Part 1 is available here, and part 3 is available here.

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The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is right now the most common serial peripheral bus in existence. Allowing all the most common devices to connect to your computer, to each other, through hubs, and now even wireless USB has become the dominant method of low bandwidth communications between devices and their peripherals.

However, USB is not without flaws, in fact, it has tons of issues that other less accepted standards have already solved, and USB has either not solved them or solved them only recently. One of those problems is that, although USB does provide electrical power to peripherals, it is rarely enough to run devices that suck juice like no tomorrow. Powered USB exists to solve this problem.

I will tell you why Powered USB will never be widely accepted, and also why we need it. However, to do so, this article is split into two three parts: the first part discusses the history of USB and previous peripheral ports, and why it it became widely accepted, the second part contains the meat of my argument on why Powered USB is both needed, yet failing to be accepted, and the third part describes a possible future USB 3 specification in detail.

This is part 1. Part 2 is available here, and part 3 is available here.

(more…)

I was in the market for a new case. My last one, some no-name cramped little tower was nearing ten years old, and couldn’t handle modern parts anymore without severe cooling problems, and it couldn’t even fit a front case fan properly without vibrating no matter what fan I used; not only that, it didn’t dampen noise from anything in the case.

I decided I wanted a case that was elegant, black, made of heavy steel, and designed to be dead quiet. I decided on the Antec P180B. This case is the kind of case Darth Vader would buy. This is the kind of case that would find itself at home next to a Bugatti Veyron. In 2001, this case is what they found floating in space near Saturn. This case makes both HAL and Sharon Apple envious.

This case is now quietly running under my desk as I write this article. Not only is it running silent, its running cool. Antec really designed a winner this time; I mean, you wouldn’t think it would be possible to obsess about a case, but this case should not hold parts… it should be placed on a pedestal and worshiped.

And now, the unboxing.

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PC vs Mac Redux

Bruno Bozzetto - Female vs Male