USB 2 Devices Not Necessarily High-Speed

mgcsinc writes "Yahoo is running a story on how some manufacturers of "USB 2.0" devices are making hardware compatible with the USB 2.0 standard, but not necessarily its high-speed component." Sounds like the complaint raised earlier this year.

Comments

But do they NEED it?

[pfraser]

Do the devices need that high-speed component? Does a USB mouse need to be able to transmit data in excess of 400mbit/sec? No?

Re:But do they NEED it?

[Kenja]

Do you get this pissed off when your 100Base-T network dosn't give you 100 megabit throughput?

Re:But do they NEED it?

[gooberguy]

For example, a mouse doesn't need that transfer rate. Nor a keyboard.

So then a mouse should be USB 1, not 2. If it doesn't go at USB2 speeds, it shouldn't be called USB 2. Manufacturers are labeling USB 1 things as USB 2 to increase sales while deliberately misleading people. That is clearly wrong, and should be stopped.

Re:But do they NEED it?

[gooberguy]

Do you get this pissed off when your 100Base-T network dosn't give you 100 megabit throughput?

If someone labeled a 10Mbit card as a 100Mbit card and tried selling it, they would get sued for false advertising. And yes, I do get angry if I can't get 100Mb/sec over my ethernet connection.

Re:But do they NEED it?

[Riskable]

I'm not 100% sure, but there's a good technical reason to buy a USB 2.0 mouse over a 1.0 or 1.1 version even if they're the same low speed: It doesn't mess with your 2.0 bus.

A USB 1.1 mouse will revert the whole bus to 1.1 protocol and thus leave your nice 2.0 devices working slower than ever. However, a USB 2.0-compatible mouse would be added to a 2.0 bus without slowing it down--despite the fact that it does not need that speed.

So USB 2.0 compatibility *IS* important if you want to hook up a hard drive to the same bus as your mouse.

Is this disingenuous?

[BizidyDizidy]

There's no real false advertising here; just an assumption on the part of consumer.

Should it be necessary that they inform you of the lack of full speed utilization? What if it's faster than USB 1.0 but not FULL speed.

IMO, the only clearcut measure is whether the standard is met, and it seems to be.

Re:Is this disingenuous?

[pla]

Should it be necessary that they inform you of the lack of full speed utilization?

If Dell sells you a PC with a "Pentium 4 3.2GHz", would you feel a tad bit peeved to discover that, while it actually does have a 3.2GHz P4 in it, they chose a noname chipset that only clocks it at 800MHz?

Because, that would satisfy your condition - It has the advertized part in it, but only clocks it at 25% of its rated maximum.

Yes, people expect (and should expect) a product to make full use of the standards it supposedly meets. If companies only wants to bother with an allowed subset of a standard, I consider it nothing short of fraud to not explicitly say, on the outside of any packaging, that it does not meet the entire spec.

Re:Is this disingenuous?

[BizidyDizidy]

First of all, your post reminded of the premise from this movie where a con man sells old people "numbered copper engravings of Abraham Lincoln" for something like 49.99, then mails them a penny.

USB 2.0 is a standard, not a component. When I buy a computer that advertises certain components, I better damn well get them.

When I buy a product that advertises a certain standard, I better damn well get it. And I am.

We both know there is a problem. I argue that it's not at all the problem of the person who, upon making a product that meets the standard, advertises that standard. Instead, the standard itself is flawed.

I hope you can see the difference from your analogy. As the article seems to hint, the standard needs to be revised, and probably with something more powerful than the "guidelines" the article suggests.

cost of backwards compatibility

[Creepy Crawler]

Well, many devices do not need the 480Mb/s speed as said in the article however, the devices are backwards compatible.

So why is everyone whining? Just have the anufacturers put max speed transfer on the boxes as spec sheet. Just dont buy anything from those manufacturers who dont.

And as a sideline about the jab about printers not meing "full-speed", who cares? Paralell printers, in epp/ecp mode, could only transfer max 11Mbps. And since consumer printers dont print very fast, what's the big deal? And it it was made to be fast, it'd have a network jack for 100Mbps connectivity.

Surprised?

[Deaper]

Does this actually surprise anyone? I mean these are the same people who have been decieving consumers for years with hard drive sizes. Do you actually think they're going to tell you the device doesn't work the way it should by labeling it as such? The record industry doesn't label crippled crap. Why should the computer industry? Why do consumers actually trust producers that constantly try to implement new technology that assume that the consumer is the one that can't be trusted? Does it make me angry that the producers keep doing this kind of crap? Yes. Does it surprise me? Not in the least.

bad packaging

[chickenwing]

The problem is that the boxes of most boxes are covered with pictures of people oohing and ahhing but don't have much information about what is actually inside the box. Even manuals (if you are lucky enough to get one) are very light on specs.

I see this as one of the more unfortunate side-effects of the mass adoption of computers. Most people will never realize their hardware is crappier than they thought, and the rest of us are told to shut up and be good little consumers. I get my revenge by buying multiple models off the shelf, and returning all but the one that makes the cut.

When are they going to learn...

[A Commentor]

So the industry keeps thinking it can pull one over on the consumers and make more money, but it's just the lawyers that will win on this one...

• Just like:
• Screen sizes include areas you can't actually see. 15" really means 13.8"...
  
• Harddrive sizes are not what they seem. 1M == 1,000,000 bytes not 1024*1024.
  

The computer industry will keep making disceptive ads and lawyers doing class-action suits against them will keep getting rich. My guess is that the computer industry still make more money than they lose to the lawyers, so everyone is better off but the consumer...

Re:Keyboards and Mice

[gooberguy]

Companies aren't just selling mice and keyboards as USB 2 when they aren't, they are doing the same thing for storage, scanners, cameras, everything.

If a consumer just looks at boxes and buys it because "2.0 is higher than 1.1: it must be newer/better," then they deserve what they get. All they have to do is look at the box or ask someone in the department to explain the difference and they'll realize there's no benefit.

I'm sure the salesman would be happy to convince the customer to buy the less expensive USB1 mouse, instead of the USB2 mouse that is exactly the same except for the price. Also, if you put a USB1 device on a hub with USB2 devices, ALL of them will run at USB1 speeds.

I do think it's amoral of companies to do this, the customer isn't losing anything. If it were an external hard drive, they would have a case.

Companies are starting to market USB1 drives as USB2. They are effectively lying to consumers to increase thier profits, and it looks like you are fine with it. Have fun with your new USB2 hard drive enclosure!

Article is rather pointless/common sense

[reiggin]

What's so surprising here? There is nothing of real merit in this article. It's all stuff any educated consumer should realize. And as for the uneducated consumers.... well, they probably aren't reading Slashdot. My point is, why is this frontpage Slashdot news?

All it's saying is that mostly only hard drives and burners are using "hi-speed" USB. We all knew that, right? And if we thought that maybe printer and flash memory readers were really using "hi-speed" we at least knew that they couldn't take advantage of the full bandwidth, right? And we all have come to expect manufacturers to lie to us on the packaging, right?

Yes, it is disappointing that companies are using the USB 2.0 hype to sell lower speed products. But what's the big deal?

The only thing that would really piss me off is if the hard drive and cd/dvd-r burners WEREN'T using "hi-speed" USB 2.0. But the article says they are! Or at least it doesn't say they aren't. And that's my second point: The article doesn't really say much of anything. It only puts the question of authenticity in the reader's mind. I think it is a poorly constructed article and not very worthy of Slashdot attention.

I'm not trying to flame or troll. I am just really missing the significance of this article.

But do they NEED it? Yes, they do.

[fmaxwell]

Do the devices need that high-speed component?

If the device is an external hard disc, capacious MP3 player, flash card adapter, CD or DVD drive, then hell yes they need it. If I bought a 512MB pen drive advertised as USB 2.0 and it only accepted data at 12Mbps, then I'd be damned pissed. That would mean that it would take a minimum of 341 seconds to fill even assuming the theoretical maximum transfer rate of 12Mbps with no overhead. That's about six minutes. Real USB 2.0 (480Mbps) would mean that the transfer would take about 8.5 seconds (again, assuming the maximum possible speed).

I've got an Archos Studio 10GB MP3 player. It runs USB 1.1 and it's slow to load up with music. It was also cheap and I was willing to accept slow data transfers for the low price. If I paid for one that was advertised as USB 2.0 and it only accepted data at the slow USB 1.1 transfer rate, I would be damned pissed and probably would return it.

Who wants to buy my Pentium IV*?

[Sri Lumpa]

If they did the same with processors a Pentium would be advertised as a Pentium IV because the Pentium IV is backward compatible with the Pentium but can also go faster.

So a Pentium is now a low-speed Pentium IV; a Pentium II a full-speed Pentium IV and a Pentium IV a high-speed Pentium IV**.

They may qualify under the technical standard as USB2.0 but it clearly is labelled as such to deceive the customers into expecting a faster device.

*the fine print says it's a low-speed one.

**I know it is not a perfect analogy given the differences in instruction set but it's good enough to drive the point home, IMO.

Can I boot? Er...No.

[Anonymous Coward]

USB 2.0 = Iffy development, and I can't boot from the drive.
FireWire 800 (or 400, for that matter) = High-speed components that I can boot from.

The answer = USB 2 blows.