Socket to ‘em

In one of my very occasional forays into the specifics of the job, I thought I should mention the new technology that will help working photographers everywhere; USB 3.0.

One of the biggest bottlenecks in speed when working to a deadline for me is the downloading of images from the card to the pc/mac.  When I used to use my macbook pro for work, firewire 800 made things easier thanks to it’s near-800Mbit transfer rates but PC users out there had to put up with the relatively snail’s-pace speed of USB 2.0.  Aside from shooting tethered to the laptop, the minutes of delay as you watch the files slowly transfer can produce some of the finest lists of expletives known to mankind,

Thankfully, this is to be addressed with the release of “Superspeed USB” as it’s set to be known.  Backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 and providing transfer rates up to ten times faster than it’s predecessor’s 480Mbps limit, 4.8Gbps should make ripping your hair out in frustration as you rip your cards a thing of the past.  To put this into perspective, WinHEC 2008 provided a benchmark simulation for transfering a 25GB file:

Apologies for those readers who couldn’t give a flying one about this kind of thing.  Normal service of blather, drivel and gubbins will return as normal next time..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm. It is filed under Random oddity and tagged with 3.0, cable, computer, connection, download, mac, pc, superspeed, technology, universal serial bus, USB, USB3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.