Belkin Gets You Ready For USB 3.0 With New Accessories
USB 3.0 is a fantastic upgrade to a globally famous standard, and while USB 2.0 products will work with USB 3.0 sockets at the slower speed, users will need actual USB 3.0 ports in order to make the most of any external hard drive or other USB 3.0 peripheral that they may purchase over the next few months and years. Belkin, which knows a thing or two about making accessories, has just announced four new products to help people upgrade their existing systems with USB 3.0 support. It's not exactly cheap to upgrade, but it's far less expensive than buying an all new machine once USB 3.0 ports are commonplace on them (which still hasn't happened, by the way).
For desktop/tower users, the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCIe Add-In Card has you covered. All you need is a free PCIe card slot, and once you pop this in, your machine will now be able to take full advantage of USB 3.0 speeds. For notebook users, the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ExpressCard gives you a pair of USB 3.0 ports if you're willing to deal with a bulge, while a couple of USB 3.0 cables ensure that the transfers remain speedy from drive to PC. In case you're wondering, USB 3.0 are required to take advantage of USB 3.0 speeds, so your stash of USB 2.0 will soon be a lot less attractive.
All of the devices will ship in April (U.S.) or May (Canada), with pricing listed below.
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCIe Add-In Card (F4U023) - $79.99
* Connects up to 127 USB devices (through cascading additional hubs)
* Supports plug and play and hot-swap functionality
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ExpressCard™ (F4U024) - $79.99
* Fully compliant with ExpressCard specification 1.0 and Universal Serial Bus 3.0 specification Revision 1.0
* Supports plug and play and hot-swap functionality
* Connects up to 127 USB devices (through cascading additional hubs)
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Premium A-B Cable, 4 ft.(F3U158-04) - $39.99 ; 8 ft. (F3U158-08) - $49.99
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Premium Micro-B Cable, 4 ft. (F3U165-04) - $39.99; 8 ft. (F3U165-08) - $49.99
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"In case you're wondering, USB 3.0 are required to take advantage of USB 3.0 speeds, so your stash of USB 2.0 will soon be a lot less attractive." I'm wondering what the heck this sentence means. |
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I imagine it means everything USB 2.0 will become a shadow in the new glorified image of USB 3.0. Speaking of the article...I wonder when USB 3.0 will finally be the new factory standard. |
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The performance is way beyond USB 2.0 and even firewire 800 as well as E-sata unless it is E-sata 3. Just as a precautionary measure if I was buying a mb I would make sure it had more than a single PCI-X slot. I still have not figured out what is requires. I would imagine not X16, but X16 is also universal with X8, X4, and X1 it just depends on the card plugging into the slots extended in/out put from what I understand anyway. |
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Huzzah for Belkin, a quality company (I have a lot of their add-on gear) which has the gonads to actually release prices. None of this "prices will be announced later in 2010" booshwah for them! (Though forty bucks for a USB cable seems a trifle excessive.) This is, however, making me take stock of the PCIe status of my system. Of course, one slot, the x16, is taken up by that lovely ATi Radeon 5850. There's an x4 which is intended for another video card, but which I'll save for other purposes; and a x1 wedged between the graphics card and the CPU heatsink. (Experience has shown that the Megahalems take a lot of room-- long-time HH readers may recall the difficulties I had with the RAM heatsinks impinging on the CPU fan. So there's no guarantee that a peripheral card will even fit in there.) So if I want to get the rad nu warezzz (as the kids are saying these days, assuming that "these days" means 1981) of USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s, that's both of the extra card slots taken up. I also want to put in a TV tuner card, though, and the PCIe cards (even operating at x1) are vastly superior to the PCI versions. Oh well. I'll figure something out. Who knew that my new system would be obsoleted so quickly? |
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wow i had no idea USB 3.0 even existed up until this point |
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