USB 3.0 spec set in stone – move your files about at speeds of 4.8Gbps

usb-3-spec-cables-adaptor.jpg

If you’re constantly shuffling vast Blu-ray rips from device to device and sighing while your PC locks up for 27 minutes, rejoice! USB 3.0 is coming to make all your data-copying woes disappear.

The shadowy USB consortium, which meets in Vienna once every 1000 years, has confirmed the spec of USB 3.0, proudly telling everyone that a 25GB file will copy from a PC to a 3.0 device in 70 seconds…

FireWire gets a speed boost, but USB will catch up in time

firewire_usb.gif

FireWire versus USB isn’t exactly the most exciting of format wars — we are talking about data cables, after all. Most people use one or the other for connecting all manner of digital paraphernalia to their PC (and more often than not, USB 2.0) but probably don’t give the underlying technology much of a though.

FireWire, pioneered by the likes of Apple and Sony, has had a bit of a rough ride. It appeared almost ubiquitously on Apple computers and Sony camcorders, and would have been familiar to early adopters of the iPod, but has since fallen from favour somewhat, with Apple downgrading many of their FireWire ports from the faster 800Mbps to slower 400Mbps standard…