Also, as long as I’ve spoke english, three times more is 300% not 400%.

You say : “Powered USB can output 144 watts at 24 volts … Firewire does … 45 watts at … 30 volts (1.5 amps current), and USB 1.1 and 2.0 does 2.5 watts at 5 volts (500mA of current).

“According to recent comments of this article, my original math was wrong: at 24 volts Powered USB only provides three times more power than Firewire, and at 5 volts Powered USB provides five times more power than normal USB.”

This still isn’t correct. Now the problem is the wording. You should have said “at 24 volts Powered USB provides three times AS MUCH power AS Firewire.”

“Three times more” means the original amount plus 3 times the original amount – or four times AS MUCH. Three times more than 100 would be 400.

English is a challenging language for every purpose, and it’s especially so for technical writing. A local college’s or university’s course in technical writing might help to eliminate similar errors in future articles.

Raising the voltage allows much higher wattages, but it does increase the component count on the powered device, as it will need to step the voltage down, and the current up, to meet the requirements of the devices. Although the device would probably already contain a voltage controller to handle any voltage drop due to the resistance of the cable.

Using USB2’s 1.5 amp cables and 100v would give 150w theoretical and not require anymore connectors. The raise in voltage would be negotiated just like everything else, to ensure nothing was electrocuted.

Up to 120VDC is classed as ‘extra low voltage’ and so would not require any significant differences than using 12v, so long as the insulation was sufficient.

LOL…you ARE kidding, right?

Right? Lord I hope so.

OK, L’il Al…Some real science 101. The driving force behind the earth warming comes down to carbon dioxide, correct? Any first year collegs student will know this. I understand your concern and I am here to help with a sure fire way for you and anyone else worshiping at this alter to contribute, and You don’t have to sacrifice your computing power.

Stop exhaling.
http://www.lobby4linux.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=2

h

Devastating? A little alarmist, don’t you think? I’m guessing you don’t live alone, and thus don’t pay close attention to your power consumption, because my computer and its peripherals consume the least amount of power in my apartment, other than my 30w halogen lamps. It’s TVs, refrigerators and other appliances that consume the most power. In comparison, computers are just table stakes. I even lived in an apartment once where we had four computers running non-stop, and our power consumption was still really low, paying an average of $75/month for power between two people.

That said, I would just like to not be dependent on power bricks for my peripherals anymore. It’s beyond ridiculous how much cable spaghetti it creates.

The peer-to-peer part of FireWire (ie: all devices on the bus are “equals”) allows lots of useful stuff (like TCPIP networking) – OHCI (etc) is only a small part of this.

The USB 2.0 stuff is great, but trying to endlessly improve on something that’s only got “problems” from a blinkered point of view is crazy : everyone pays for that – you, me, your grandmother and my idiot father

Not only does Firewire have a nicer plug, which causes much less damage to the port if you try and shove it in the wrong way, firewire 800 is much faster then USB (at least at this stage) and Firewire supports P2P networking, where every device can be assigned an IP address, and have equal status on the bus.

The only problem I see with firewire is its lack of ubiquity and presence on consumer devices.

I do like USB, and I appreciate what it has done for consumer computing, but Firewire seems far more forward thinking.

WTF? You say (rightly) that Firewire400 beats USB2 (and that’s because of all the crappy client/server-type communication going on), that Firewire800 is THREE times faster than THAT, And THEN you can turn around and say that you think USB (even higher-powered – something that can ALSO be done on Firewire) could STILL beat it? Please: explain.

(btw: FW 4-pin cables do not have power – only the 6-pin ones do. 4-pins are a lot smaller and are usually found on battery-powered cameras and such; but some suppliers DO make “firewire power supplies” so that (6-pin) cable-powered devices can be used in 4-pin inputs.)

The solution isn’t to develop a new plug that can supply multiple voltages, but just to up the maximum 5V amperage by a moderate amount. Even 1 Amp is sufficient to power 2.5″ Laptop HDD enclosures, and 2-3A should be plenty for desktop HDD enclosures. The current USB2 cable spec supports up to 1.5A, so bumping up the current capacity of the socket and controller electronics should be relatively easy, and it would also be possible to get even higher current levels by specifying slightly thicker power wires in a newer standard. While this may not give us the capacity to power really high-drain devices like scanners and printers from USB, I really can’t see requiring an electrical outlet as being a substantial hinderance in the usefulness of high-drain devices.

You are joking yes?

The transformer pack required to lower the AC voltage from the wall to the acceptable 12 volts , has a loss of upto 30%.
Thats 30% wastes energy, if that was ofloaded to the somewhat more efficient computer power supply 20% loss
i find that acceptable

You are assuming that most people are smart all the time. You’re assuming that everyone reads all the fine print all the time. Neither of these is true. A large number of people are not as smart as you, and even the people who are as smart as you are not smart all the time. Sometimes people get in a hurry and don’t see all the details.

I haven’t looked at all the details of the spec, but from this article it appears to me that there is no such thing as “a (singular) Powered USB Plug”. Rather, there’s Powered USB type X, Powered USB type Y, etc. You can bet your life that many advertisers and people will talk about just “Powered USB” as if there’s only one type, and this will cause problems when people later on discover the multitude of incompatible types.

I can also guarantee you that if the plug looks like it should vaguely fit (but won’t due to minor keying differences), that someone will try to force it to fit because he doesn’t notice the key. I’ve seen lots of computer equipment with broken plugs and jacks for this very reason.

Your last statement regarding how smart people can figure stuff out shows that you missed the point of the article. The article was not addressing whether smart people can figure out the new USB design. It was about whether a large enough number of people would figure out the new design to make the design accepted (and problems in the design that would cause people to not like it).

I’m sure I could design a gadget that works great only when you’re jumping up and down. I’m sure smart people could figure this out. But it’s completely valid for someone to point out that this might cause problems for some people (who might think the gadget is broken because it didn’t work right when they weren’t jumping), and suggest that a different approach might make the gadget more acceptable.

>Powered USB is the last thing we need. Computers are already using too much power. The environmental impact from using all that electricity will be devastating.

Just because we have a standard plug doesn’t mean we use more electricity. What would you rather have a bunch of bricks converting AC to DC or the computer’s power supply doing it. (My bet is that the bricks use more of your precious electricity)