So I'll start my placement with Pfizer soon and one of the first things I'll buy is a laptop. My flatmate is a tech-nerd and he says that I should wait about 7 months until USB3 becomes cheaper and widely available. Do you guys think his claims hold any merit? Is USB3 so revolutionary that it's worth waiting for it? The world of computers was, is and will be advancing very fast and there's certainly no point to keep procrastinating because of every innovation. But he says that it's soooo much faster than USB2 that anyone without USB3 will be in trouble in a couple of years when all the tech stuff like printers, cards, etc. will be made into USB3 because it's so awesome.

So what do you think? Will my laptop be futureproof if I buy it without USB3 or will I find myself not being able to use many external devices in a couple of years? (assume I will not be able to buy a new one for a long time)

Well from past experience (USB 2.0 vs. 1.1) I think we can say that 2.0 is still not a must have, basically every device still runs on 1.1 but sometimes awfully slow. Don't try to connect hard disk to USB 1.1 if you hold your sane mind dear...
However USB 2.0 (57 MB/s) is so much faster than 1.1 (1.43 MB/s) that it's really nice to have. Probably the same will hold true for 3.0 (572 MB/s).

So you have to think about what you're gonna do with your laptop/USB.
Do you only need it for printers and transferring stuff from and to your mobile phone? Then USB 2.0 will serve you well for many years to come.
Will you start a movie collection and store it to your external HDD/SSD via USB? Then it might indeed be worth the wait. Current HDDs typically have a transfer speed of 70 MB/s and SSDs even more reaching up to 120 MB/s. So USB 2.0 today already halves the top notch HDDs transfer rates. And it will be more in the future.

I cannot think of any USB device besides external HDDs and flash drives which would benefit from higher transfer rates. And even so, the quality of the flash drive and the enclosures used in external HDDs usually hamper USB 2.0 from running at full spec.

Until we get devices which are nearly saturating the current 2.0 limit (Which are a few and far between) I see no reason to worry about 3.0.

As for when 3.0 will become available, consider this:
USB 3.0 is something we're only seeing right now on high end (Read: Not in OEM desktops for the most part. There will be OEM boards with USB 3.0, as there might be already, but until it replaces 2.0, I don't consider it a standard.) boards, so until HP/Dell/whoever else get to adding them in, the majority of people will not have access to them, and thus no concern for them. From what I'm hearing right now, which is not exactly solid information, Intel's next two chipsets, X68 and P65, will not be having USB 3.0 standard, though X78 and P75 are supposed to. They're also moving to new sockets (1365 and 1155 I think, as opposed to our current 1366 and 1156. They deliberately changed 1 pin to make the current CPUs incompatible.), further angering people who adapted to the new sockets.

I'm the first to say my Core i7 920 1366 is absolute overkill, and quite frankly, I'd be happy with a Q9650 @ 4GHz with 4GB of DDR2 instead of a 920 at 4GHz with 6GB of DDR3. A lot of people didn't need to upgrade but figured 'Well, 775 lasted a long time, and now its over, so why not grab the next one up?', though most of these people went to 1156 and not 1366, both sockets are having a very short lifespan as compared to 775. In fact, Intel alluded to, and nearly assured us that at least the enterprise level (1366) was going to have a longer lifecycle. Now with rumors stating X68/P65 will be here before mid-2011, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I know I went a little off-base here, but I'm just talking about current motherboard lifecycles because its the motherboards that will determine when USB 3.0 is adapted to the mainstream. If X68/P65 have as short of a life cycle as X58/P55, then I think USB 3.0 coming on X78/P75 won't be a big deal. A lot of people are talking about skipping the 6 series chipsets, and so we'll see how that factors in to the life cycle and release of the 7 series and thus new standards.

Also, Intel is working on something called Light Peak to replace nearly all current motherboard bus systems. We have no idea if Light Peak's development is part of the reason they're stalling USB 3.0 as well as some other new specifications from becoming standard yet. If Light Peak's demonstrated 10GBps, or even its theoretical 100GBps become a reality, I think a lot of buses are going to move to that standard. Just about anything you can think of, (VGA, DVI, HDMI, USB, Firewire, ect.) can apparently be run over Light Peak and at such an amazing transfer rate, one or two of these cables running at 10GBps could handle nearly every data connection for your computer without any bandwidth limitation.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 1 2010, 10:53 am by Excalibur.

Yeah, when I first remember USB 3 I considered waiting to get my computer. Then I changed my mind; USB 2.0 is enough for me, I have no idea when USB 3.0 or Lightpeak will be added, etc. Just get the computer.

If you're buying a computer, and can possibly get USB 3.0 on it, I'd say go for it, because unlike the male ends, USB 3.0 is compatible with the previous versions, so it's worth getting on your system, because even if USB 3.0 fizzles and dies, you'll still be in good shape, and if it ends up being as huge as your friend thinks it will be, then you'll be in even better shape.

Bottom line, if you're willing to wait, and aren't in NEED of a newer laptop, there's no harm in doing so, things will get cheaper, and current questions will work out, however, if not, there's really no major harm in getting one with USB 2.0 ports on it, since I think most devices will continue to use them, since they don't need the excess speed, and I'm betting there's going to be USB 2.0 to 3.0 converters anyway in the future, so if a need to plug in 3.0 devices arises, you won't have any issues other than a LOT slower speeds.

I would say no because I suspect they will have expresscard2.0 to usb3.0 in the future. So you do not necessary have to have usb3.0 on your motherboard.
(expresscard1.0 is faster than usb2.0 anyway)

Anything that needs more than 480 Mbps isn't needed on a laptop. Buy now if you need it now. Buy later if you need it later. Buy now if you want it now.

Also, SSDs are breaking the SATA 3 Gbps, nude. Some are up to 700 MB/s, which breaks SATA 6 Gbps, and can only be used on PCI-e (250 MB/s per lane, 2.0 is 500 MB/s per lane).

Except that USB 2.0 actually has horribly high overheads, gives low data throughput and is already easily saturated by even 5,400RPM laptop hard drives - I've got a 2.5 external enclosure that has eSATA and USB and the eSATA is far faster than the USB.

Google usb vs firewire for more, but here's results of a test of Firewire 400Mbps vs USB 2.0 480Mbps on the same hard drive just using different interfaces:

Read Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0

Write Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0


As for USB 3.0, it'll only be useful for moving lots of data around, eg with external hard drives, and possibly USB attached scanners/printers. If this isn't something that concerns you, just go with USB 2.0 for now. As someone else says above, you will likely be able to get a USB3.0 express card at some point should you ever need one and in the meantime you can investigate eSATA.

Also Falkoner is correct, if you have USB 2.0 ports on your computer, USB 3.0 devices using USB 2.0 cables will still work in the USB2.0 ports, you'll just be limited to USB2.0 speeds. So there's no problem of not being able to use newer products on your old laptop, unless those newer products specifically need USB3.0 to be able to operate at all (presently no such products exist, nor are they ever likely to).