For the past ten years USB and FireWire have struggled to dominate the desktop interface market. Until five years ago, because of the relatively fast 400 Mbps offered by FireWire, USB, jokingly referred to as Ultra Slow Bandwidth, was relegated to low-bandwidth applications such as keyboards and mice. At the end of 2001, however, USB dealt a fatal blow to FireWire with the release of the new USB 2.0 standard offering a maximum speed of 480 Mbps, faster than the theoretical limit of FireWire (though, in practice, usually slower).
It seems that USB has essentially won the standards battle with FireWire because of its relative low-cost and high availability. The limitation of USB (both the 1.1 and 2.0 standards popular today) is the 16 foot limit. When you have more than 16 feet between your computer and your USB device you will see significant degradation in the signal that can cause problems ranging from slower transmission speeds to an entirely dropped connection. This causes problems for people who want to run a USB cable to a printer located in another room, to a presentation keyboard/mouse combo or any other USB device that may be in a remote location.
The...
To view and download this full PLR article, you must be logged in. Registration is completely free. Once you create your account, you will be able to browse, search & downlod from our PLR articles database of over "1,57,897+" on 1,000's of niches and 200+ categories without paying a penny. Click here to signup...
