This is great news, but sadly how long will it take for new motherboards to catch up They are still selling USB2 only mobos.....how long has USB3 been around now?

USB3.0 has been around since 2008, and USB3.1 will most likely come in broadwell motherboards as mobo companies have to sell off their older motherboards as well. I hope that usb3.1 is included in some haswell-e mobos, which are coming out later this year (they are NOT ivy bridge-e processors)

is it backward compatible with existing controllers? I doubt it.

crankypenguin said:

This is great news, but sadly how long will it take for new motherboards to catch up They are still selling USB2 only mobos.....how long has USB3 been around now?

Hi there
For ONCE some new technology is going to deliver unlike the stupid things like 300 GB optical drives being proposed -- but MOBOS as the other poster says still rarely have USB3 slots and the external PCI-E USB 3 cards generally available s are worse than useless. You are actually not much worse off just plugging your USB 3 device into a USB 2 slot --it will still perform a little faster than a standard USB 2 device anyway - than using one of those cards on a standard MOBO as the PCI bus isn't fast enough for USB 3 anyway.

Also a LAPTOP having more than 1 USB 3 slot these days is still as rare as Hens' teeth --a lot of cheaper ones being sold still don't have ANY at all.

I'm all in favour of these -- hopefully external HDD's will have this capability too.

Faster device transfer that works is what a LOT of people want and need -- also think too with larger HDD's - more backups and you want this to be performed also within a reasonable time.

Now how about it while we are at it -- DECENT WI FI adapters -- it's SILLY having 50 - 100 mbs broadband speed and then still being stuck with a SLOW Wi-Fi adapter -- and not everybody can use or wants to use those "electric Ring main" type of devices either. Wi-fi technology doesn't seem to have advanced very far since its introduction -- I think I'd prefer emphasis on THIS rather than ridiculously silly usb speeds but I'll take the USB 3.1 standard.

(Remember a few years ago when people were still talking about READ CD's at 150X - 200X standard !! -- these were so stupid that if one was slightly damaged and came flying out of the machine it could literally SLICE your neck off)

Maybe a good story here :"Murdered by a PC" !!..

Cheers
jimbo

crankypenguin said:

This is great news, but sadly how long will it take for new motherboards to catch up They are still selling USB2 only mobos.....how long has USB3 been around now?

Not sure what motherboards you're buying but most motherboards today do come with USB 3.0. And for the record, when I bought my Gigabyte board (GA-X58A-UD5) back in 2010, it too had USB 3.0. In fact, 2

jimbo45 said:

Also a LAPTOP having more than 1 USB 3 slot these days is still as rare as Hens' teeth --a lot of cheaper ones being sold still don't have ANY at all.

The (my) Asus Zenbook Prime 13.3 inch laptop has two USB 3.0 ports. Yay Asus!

You might also note that Samsung too has laptops with USB 3.0 ports as well. I know because I was seriously considering a Samsung Series 9 notebook. However they come with one vs. two for ASUS.

Anyway I don't see this going mainstream (seeing lots of USB 3.1 devices) until at minimum late 2014. Though I'd imagine you'll see a few add-on cards first, then incorporation into motherboards.

Golden said:

What would really be nice is if Microsoft actually provided native USB3/3.1 drivers....

They may.... once the tech becomes mainstream. Until then, it's just guesswork.