Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Greetings, loyal
Speaker 1: tech stuff fans, and welcome to the podcast. My name
Speaker 1: is Chris Polette. I'm an editor at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, and sitting next to me, as usual, is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hoi hoi. Okay, it's interesting way
Speaker 1: to start off our podcasts this afternoon. Right, Well, there's
Speaker 1: another interesting way we could start off our podcast. Okay,
Speaker 1: that would be with listener made Yeah. I feel ambushed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know you walked right into that one. So
Speaker 1: here's a listener mail from Leanna, and Leanna says, I
Speaker 1: was wondering what's USB two point oh all about? Will
Speaker 1: all my peripherals for my laptop stop working if I
Speaker 1: don't install a USB two point oh hub. It'd be
Speaker 1: cool to hear a podcast on this, Thanks Leanna. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we didn't get to this too late. USB two point
Speaker 1: i has been around for a while, Yeah, quite some time.
Speaker 1: Chances are you're actually using USB two point oh peripherals
Speaker 1: right now. In fact, um, I would be very surprised
Speaker 1: to hear that you were using USB one point one. Uh,
Speaker 1: two point oh has been the standard for a while,
Speaker 1: and three point oh. The three point oh um specifications
Speaker 1: were released last year. We can expect to see USB
Speaker 1: three point oh devices probably sometime in two thousand ten.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, I've seen as early as this year,
Speaker 1: but uh, it's gonna take him a while to get
Speaker 1: it in rolled out into the in the individual Yeah,
Speaker 1: things like things like digital cameras and and B three
Speaker 1: players and all that kind of stuff. It'll it's gonna
Speaker 1: take a little while. But you asked, what's the deal
Speaker 1: about it? And do you need a hub and all
Speaker 1: these kind of questions. We're gonna tackle that. So USB
Speaker 1: it's really a method of transferring data back and forth
Speaker 1: between different devices using a cable, a USB cable, yep um. USB.
Speaker 1: Going back to uh the very beginning, USB is actually
Speaker 1: sort of an old technology now. I mean one point
Speaker 1: oh was launched in November, and the first really the
Speaker 1: one that that really took off was one point one,
Speaker 1: which came out in September, which, uh, ironically was the
Speaker 1: same month that they launched the Bondai Blue iMac. The
Speaker 1: very very first iMac, which was the first computer that
Speaker 1: used only USB and no other technologies. Right, so you
Speaker 1: might wonder, Okay, so what's the big deal with USB? USB?
Speaker 1: First of all, it stands for Universal Serial Bus, and
Speaker 1: a USB is just a way of connecting a device
Speaker 1: to something like a computer. Um, actually it is a computer.
Speaker 1: I mean computer acts as the host for for USB devices.
Speaker 1: And the reason why USB is such a big deal
Speaker 1: is before USB, you had lots of proprietary or very
Speaker 1: specialized kinds of cables and plugs you had to use
Speaker 1: for different kinds of devices if you wanted to hook
Speaker 1: them up to your computer, like parallel cereal scuzzy. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You had all these different different things like if you
Speaker 1: had a printer, then you were going to use a
Speaker 1: parallel printer port, which were you know, these pretty wide
Speaker 1: uh cables. Monitors had their own kind of connectors, modems
Speaker 1: had their own kind of connectors um. And then you
Speaker 1: had other devices like special joysticks or whatever where you
Speaker 1: would have to buy a specific kind of card that
Speaker 1: you would have to install inside your computer. UM and
Speaker 1: the at one end of the card was essentially a
Speaker 1: port and you would plug the device into that port
Speaker 1: and pretty much. Usually those ports were only good for
Speaker 1: very specific devices. You couldn't you know, you couldn't multitask
Speaker 1: with one of these things. So it ended up where
Speaker 1: you had all these different proprietary plugs and all these
Speaker 1: different proprietary ports, and it wasn't easy to switch out gadgets.
Speaker 1: Um if you decided that you wanted to upgrade, you
Speaker 1: might have to buy a whole bunch of new new
Speaker 1: hardware in order to upgrade. It just wasn't very convenient. Now,
Speaker 1: the Universal Serial Bus is much more convenient because it's
Speaker 1: a cable that if you create a device that uses this,
Speaker 1: then you know you can plug it into the same
Speaker 1: port as you would any other USB device. So you
Speaker 1: could use let's say you've got a USB keyboard and
Speaker 1: a USB mouse, and you also have a USB microphone,
Speaker 1: and you have a USB uh MP three player. All
Speaker 1: of those devices could plug into the exact same port
Speaker 1: as your as any of the others to your computer,
Speaker 1: unlike the old devices, which each had to have their
Speaker 1: own that's right, and um USB has another serious, serious
Speaker 1: advantage over those older technologies, which is it's hot swappable.
Speaker 1: And what that means is if you have a printer
Speaker 1: and uh, you want to plug it into your computer
Speaker 1: and turn it on. You can plug it into your
Speaker 1: computer and turn it on. UM, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: I had most of you long time list. There's no
Speaker 1: that I used to be a Commodore Amiga owner. Jonathan's
Speaker 1: rolling his eyes. But what I used to use if
Speaker 1: I wanted to plug something in was called Scuzzy, which
Speaker 1: was an older technology, very fast. But UM, let me
Speaker 1: explain what I'd have to do. To say, if I
Speaker 1: wanted to to hook up a printer or um an
Speaker 1: external DVD burner. Of course I didn't have those when
Speaker 1: I used my Amiga, but if I wanted to do
Speaker 1: that using the old interface, I'd have to turn my
Speaker 1: computer off and turn the peripheral off, plug it in,
Speaker 1: and make sure that there was a terminator plugged into
Speaker 1: the external port on the Scuzzy device, and then turn
Speaker 1: them on. Now, with USB, you can go ahead, plug
Speaker 1: in your your you know, iPod, you can plug in whatever,
Speaker 1: your keyboard, mouse. You don't have to worry about whether
Speaker 1: or not it's gonna cause your computer to foul up,
Speaker 1: because it would using some of those older technologies. So
Speaker 1: this is very intuitive and and it's you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to mess with it. You don't have to
Speaker 1: turn things off and worry about which one is in
Speaker 1: what order, and those there are problems that USB really
Speaker 1: made a difference in. It made it easier for manufacturers
Speaker 1: to come up with a single standard that they could
Speaker 1: use for PCs and MAX both. Right, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: actually a wonderful development. Um. When you when you plug
Speaker 1: something into a USB board or when you turn on
Speaker 1: a computer and things are already plugged into those ports, uh,
Speaker 1: the computer goes through a process called enumeration, and in enumeration,
Speaker 1: it it checks all the different ports and it assigns
Speaker 1: an address to each device that is connected to the computer.
Speaker 1: And the same thing happens when you plug something in
Speaker 1: on the fly, and if the computer recognizes the device,
Speaker 1: it works right away. If it doesn't recognize the device,
Speaker 1: it might ask you for a driver, which you may
Speaker 1: have either on a disk or you may be able
Speaker 1: to download one off the web, and then you're ready
Speaker 1: to go. You can just plug it and play. That's
Speaker 1: the common turn of phrase, I guess for that. But uh,
Speaker 1: the other neat thing, as you can connect way more
Speaker 1: devices to your computer than you could if you had
Speaker 1: to depend on you know, individual plugs and ports, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. In fact, um, you can include up to
Speaker 1: a D twenty seven with USB. That's a lot of devices. Now, um,
Speaker 1: those of you who are listening probably caught the fact
Speaker 1: that I said printer for the Amiga and that would
Speaker 1: actually have been on the parallel port. So don't write
Speaker 1: in and tell me that. But say, um, say I
Speaker 1: did have a device I wanted to plug in via this, guys,
Speaker 1: report to Miamiga. See if you plug in a printer
Speaker 1: using USB on a modern computer PC or Mac, it's
Speaker 1: going to automatically assign, uh that a number from one
Speaker 1: to one seven, I guess um. On Miamiga, I would
Speaker 1: have had to have actually assigned a number on myself.
Speaker 1: So on the back of those devices there would be
Speaker 1: a little counter. It looks like those counters that you
Speaker 1: hand holding your hand when somebody's walking through the turnstiles
Speaker 1: and you're actually doing a manual count. So whenever a
Speaker 1: girl winks at me and I hit the little and
Speaker 1: that thing, yeah, that's the one. Uh. It's actually it's
Speaker 1: actually very much like that though. It has that that
Speaker 1: digit counter. So you plug it in and you have
Speaker 1: to assign it a number yourself from one to eight.
Speaker 1: So here again USB hundred twenty seven versus very you know,
Speaker 1: a manually assigned eight. So huge advantage. And I know
Speaker 1: what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking,
Speaker 1: how can I but Jonathan and Chris, my computer only
Speaker 1: has one or two USB ports? How could I possibly
Speaker 1: hook up as many as one and twenty seven devices?
Speaker 1: Well you couldn't directly, but if you used what we
Speaker 1: call hubs USB hubs, you could do that. In the
Speaker 1: hub essentially plugs into your computer and it divides that
Speaker 1: connection into further ports. Most of them are like four
Speaker 1: ports hubs, and but you can get eight or even more.
Speaker 1: You can find some that that divided into into larger numbers.
Speaker 1: And by hooking hubs to hubs, you then increase, you know,
Speaker 1: the number of ports that you can plug things into. Plus,
Speaker 1: some peripherals like keyboards sometimes have additional USB ports on them,
Speaker 1: or monitors if you're using a desktop computer, a lot
Speaker 1: of monitors now have additional USB ports plug into them,
Speaker 1: so you can use those. So yeah, just by by
Speaker 1: adding all these hubs you can you can connect tons
Speaker 1: and tons of devices to your computer. Uh. The other
Speaker 1: neat thing is that that that that devices can pull
Speaker 1: power from your computer. There are powered and unpowered devices.
Speaker 1: Uh the USB chord if you were to cut one open,
Speaker 1: don't do it, but if you were, you would find
Speaker 1: out that there are there was it. I think it's
Speaker 1: five wires in it or is it four? No, it's
Speaker 1: got it's got two wires for power and a twisted pair.
Speaker 1: It's more added five more for USB three. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm saying that's the thing um about that is that
Speaker 1: they had to change the wiring. Yeah. But USB two,
Speaker 1: which is the common standard right now, there are four
Speaker 1: wires within the cable. Uh so yeah, you've got you've
Speaker 1: got a pair that provides the transfer of data and
Speaker 1: then you have a pair that that's for the power.
Speaker 1: So you've got a power in the ground essentially. Um
Speaker 1: so the power right, and it's five volts. I know
Speaker 1: that five volts of power for USB two point oh
Speaker 1: and uh so yeah, you can you can actually power
Speaker 1: your devices. You can charge them through your computer. Um
Speaker 1: they're actually drawing power from your computer to the device.
Speaker 1: And uh and so you can get hubs that are
Speaker 1: powered as well. Um, where you would actually plug the
Speaker 1: hub in so that way you don't you know, overload
Speaker 1: your computer with a hundred twenty seven devices all trying
Speaker 1: to pull power from your poor little laptop or whatever
Speaker 1: you're using. Yeah, it depends on it depends on what
Speaker 1: you're doing. If you're plugging in a mouse, Um, it's
Speaker 1: going to draw a power from the computer. But if
Speaker 1: you're plugging in something more substantial, say a printer, that's
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to pull the power from the computer.
Speaker 1: It's going to need its own power. Now, in the
Speaker 1: case of a a printer, it's got its own power supply.
Speaker 1: You you plug it into the wall. But what say
Speaker 1: you have you know you're you're gonna work in garage,
Speaker 1: band or something else where you want to plug in
Speaker 1: a keyboard electronic music keyboard, not a typing keyboard. Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need another source of power. And if you
Speaker 1: have a powered hub that can that can help out
Speaker 1: with some of those sort of in between uh peripherals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um let's see what else can we talk about
Speaker 1: USB before we move on to FireWire and then USB
Speaker 1: three point Well, I was going to talk about how
Speaker 1: how far you can get away because USB cable can
Speaker 1: be about five meters from the source. Right, you can
Speaker 1: extend that a power to hub has that used too,
Speaker 1: because uh it can extend up to UM up to
Speaker 1: thirty meters away. Okay. And also we should point out,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned before, the computer acts as a host,
Speaker 1: so each device is ultimately connecting directly to the computer. UH.
Speaker 1: That's important for us to to note because even though
Speaker 1: the hub might provide a node or whatever you know,
Speaker 1: connect a further connection, but ultimately the device is interacting
Speaker 1: directly with the computer, not with other devices that are
Speaker 1: on your UM uh that are hooked up through the
Speaker 1: USB ports. That's important to note because when we talk
Speaker 1: about FireWire, things change, it's different. Um. But we should
Speaker 1: also talk about the speeds. That's true. I was going
Speaker 1: to say, this is the part at which we actually
Speaker 1: address the guts of the question. Right. So USB one
Speaker 1: point one when that came out, the speed of data
Speaker 1: transfer was around twelve megabits per second. Right, it's got
Speaker 1: two modes one point five and twelve megabits per second,
Speaker 1: pretty fast. But USB two point oh was four hundred
Speaker 1: eighty megabits per second, which is even faster, much faster
Speaker 1: now between USB one point one in USB two point
Speaker 1: oh that's when we saw the introduction of FireWire. That's true,
Speaker 1: Can I mention one more thing? Go ahead? Okay, So
Speaker 1: the other the other part of of this, and it
Speaker 1: sort of ties back into the hubs. I've got a
Speaker 1: USB one point one hub that I got from my
Speaker 1: very first iMac, and I have a brand new iMac
Speaker 1: that I got last fall. Well, now I don't have
Speaker 1: to replace that hub. But when I plug that hub
Speaker 1: into my computer and then I try to plug something
Speaker 1: else that has USB two as the standard, my computer
Speaker 1: immediately goes, hey, you know, since this is a one
Speaker 1: point one hub, I can't send for eighty megabits per
Speaker 1: second down this line. Are you sure you really want
Speaker 1: to do that? See, it works fine, It will transfer
Speaker 1: data fine, just at the speeds of one point one
Speaker 1: as opposed to point out exactly so, if you were
Speaker 1: going to try to plug in your iPod and sink
Speaker 1: it with your computer, it's not going to be able
Speaker 1: to transfer songs, movies, etcetera. Nearly as fast if you're
Speaker 1: throttling it by putting it through a one point one hub.
Speaker 1: But that's that's basically the difference. It doesn't render it inoperable,
Speaker 1: It just slows it right, it's it's backward compatible. So
Speaker 1: USB two point oh will work with USB one point
Speaker 1: one UM devices or cables, whatever, whichever one you're looking at.
Speaker 1: So if you've got a device that has that only
Speaker 1: works on USB one point one and you plug it
Speaker 1: into a port that's USB two point oh, you should
Speaker 1: still be okay, You're just gonna be going at that
Speaker 1: lower speed. Um. You know, for for it to go
Speaker 1: at the higher speed, everything needs to be ready, you know,
Speaker 1: capable of performing at the highest of the standards. So technically,
Speaker 1: right now, we could say that's USB three point oh,
Speaker 1: although you aren't going to find a lot of devices
Speaker 1: and or computers that can do that right now. But
Speaker 1: if you did have a USB three point oh capable
Speaker 1: computer chord and device, then you could transfer at the
Speaker 1: top speed. And you wanted to talk to talk about FireWire,
Speaker 1: which was actually in development around the same time as
Speaker 1: USB and supposed to be a solution to the same problem. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking. You know, there's certain devices that tend
Speaker 1: to create very large files that you may want to
Speaker 1: transfer to a computer at some point, and the obvious
Speaker 1: example of that is a camera, like exactly, so you're
Speaker 1: taking these pictures or you're taking video and this. These
Speaker 1: tend to generate very large file sizes and it could
Speaker 1: take a very long time to transfer if you're you know,
Speaker 1: if you have to do it through normal cables. So
Speaker 1: FireWire was one of those solutions. And UM, I believe
Speaker 1: Apple was behind the development of that, wasn't it. That's true,
Speaker 1: But they weren't alone. They had other people in there
Speaker 1: with him, including IBM. There you go. Um So, from
Speaker 1: from what I read anyway, so USB one point one
Speaker 1: comes out, that's one of the possible solutions to this problem.
Speaker 1: FireWire comes out shortly thereafter. FireWire had much faster speed
Speaker 1: than um us BE one point one, so we're looking
Speaker 1: at twelve megabits per second at the top speed for
Speaker 1: one point one. FireWire four hundred which was the first
Speaker 1: one to come out, and that was four hundred megabits
Speaker 1: per second. Wow, how aptly named? Yes, how do you
Speaker 1: what do you know? FireWire four hundred, um and FireWire
Speaker 1: shared a lot of other similarities with the USB. You
Speaker 1: could you could hook up many different devices to a computer,
Speaker 1: not as many as USB. USB was a D twenty seven,
Speaker 1: FireWire was sixty three. Another big difference is that unlike USB,
Speaker 1: where you had where each device was ultimately hooked to
Speaker 1: a computer, and FireWire you could hook to fireware devices
Speaker 1: to each other. And so it's the difference between a
Speaker 1: a host and client relationship and appear to peer relationship.
Speaker 1: So whereas you you could think of M A A,
Speaker 1: let's think of a think about like a USB hub
Speaker 1: as a bunch of spokes that all ultimately end at
Speaker 1: the computer on one end and on a device on
Speaker 1: the other end. Okay, so FireWire you could actually daisy
Speaker 1: chain the devices. You could hook one device to another
Speaker 1: and then with a second cable, hook that device to
Speaker 1: a third device, and then hook that device to say
Speaker 1: a computer, and all of these could transfer data back
Speaker 1: and forth, so you didn't have to have a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of direct connections going to the computer. That's another
Speaker 1: one of the big differences. UM and uh there. The
Speaker 1: cable was also slightly different. UM. It had six wires
Speaker 1: in it instead of four the FireWire cable had. UM
Speaker 1: had two for power and two twisted pair sets for
Speaker 1: data transfers instead of just the single twisted pair set
Speaker 1: for the USB had UM. So this was Apple really
Speaker 1: pushed this. This and put it in a lot of
Speaker 1: their products for a really long time, and then until
Speaker 1: just recently they started to kind of back off of it. Well,
Speaker 1: they still have it available on on a lot of
Speaker 1: the high end computers, but they're sort of backing off.
Speaker 1: And although they did come out with a second version
Speaker 1: of that called um, you know, you're never gonna get
Speaker 1: this FireWire eight. Wait, let me guess how fast it went?
Speaker 1: Eight hundred megabits per second. I can't put anything past you, yea,
Speaker 1: So yes, you know it's it's it's very efficient. Um,
Speaker 1: slightly different, the connector is a little different, but it
Speaker 1: is it does work essentially the same way and you know,
Speaker 1: just faster. So yeah, let's sea if we're looking at
Speaker 1: the timeline. Then USB one point one comes out, FireWire
Speaker 1: four hunter comes out, blows away the speed for USB
Speaker 1: one point one. USB two point oh comes out. It's
Speaker 1: actually a little faster than FireWire. FireWire a hundred comes out,
Speaker 1: and it's almost twice as fast as USB two point oh.
Speaker 1: So for competition, yeah, but then again, at this point
Speaker 1: you're dealing with USB and FireWire versus serial parallel, Scuzzy
Speaker 1: A d B, you know, all those other ports so
Speaker 1: now we're just down to two connectors, which is much nicer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and really when you look at most computers, you're really
Speaker 1: done to one connector pretty much now because USB has
Speaker 1: essentially one this this format battle UM all but one it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still people who who work in video
Speaker 1: UM that prefer FireWire because a lot of video cameras
Speaker 1: that that's that's the the format they use. Well, Sony
Speaker 1: was a big proponent of it, but of course Apple
Speaker 1: owned the FireWire names, so Sony used eyelink or I
Speaker 1: got link um, you know, and a lot of other
Speaker 1: people called it by its standard name, which the Institute
Speaker 1: of Electrical and Electronics Engineers actually they use I triple
Speaker 1: E says it on the website. But yeah, I E.
Speaker 1: If you see that, that's FireWire, so um Yeah, very
Speaker 1: very popular with UM with video camera enthusiasts. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think things are moving towards USB only
Speaker 1: or even Bluetooth. Now. There's still there's still some development
Speaker 1: on the FireWire front. I know that there there's a
Speaker 1: push to to pull out another yet another new standard
Speaker 1: for FireWire, which I think would transferred data an excess
Speaker 1: of six gigabits per second. That's funny. You should mention
Speaker 1: six gigabits this. Other people are are doing that too. Yeah, yeah, like, Um,
Speaker 1: the E S A T A transfer standard. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's less popular than the other two, but it is
Speaker 1: probably the the last of the holdouts, I guess. Of
Speaker 1: course S A T A is a popular standard for
Speaker 1: internally mounting components on a computer. Um, but there is
Speaker 1: an external connector and you see you do see that
Speaker 1: on some pecs in different places. Um, but that the
Speaker 1: current standard for UH for S A T A is
Speaker 1: six gigabit per second. But USB three is approaching that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not quite it's not. It's in four point eight
Speaker 1: gigabits per second, which if you look at the USB
Speaker 1: two point oh, that's ten times faster. I was going
Speaker 1: to say that falls into the nothing to sneeze at category. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: if you were to sneeze it that you should be
Speaker 1: reprimanded exactly, for it is nothing to sneeze at. Yes,
Speaker 1: the USB three point oh sometimes people call it USB superspeed,
Speaker 1: And um, they've added five line, as I was saying
Speaker 1: earlier when I was fumbling around thinking was it four?
Speaker 1: Was it five? But they're not all copper anymore. No,
Speaker 1: there's fiber optics, and uh yeah, we're looking at UM
Speaker 1: we're looking at the potential for devices to be able
Speaker 1: to move data very very quickly. UM. Still, it's still
Speaker 1: one of those device host arrangements. The thing I like
Speaker 1: about FireWire is the idea of being able to share
Speaker 1: information between two separate devices without even bringing a computer
Speaker 1: into the picture. UM. I really do like that that capability.
Speaker 1: I don't tend to use anything that has FireWire in it.
Speaker 1: I just happened to think that's a that's a neat
Speaker 1: ability to have, UM, as opposed to having to use
Speaker 1: a computer as the middleman for all of your data transfers. UM.
Speaker 1: But I do think that USB has become pretty much
Speaker 1: the de facto standard across the industry, and so USB
Speaker 1: three point has got a good chance of being the
Speaker 1: standard for high speed data transfers between devices and your computers.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to our USB overlords. UM. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'll be using plenty of devices that use that standard.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna hit you with a question that you
Speaker 1: probably weren't expecting. How good, So I assume that USB
Speaker 1: three point I will be backward compatible. Also and that
Speaker 1: you will be able to use your USB one point
Speaker 1: one or USB two hub if you want to, or
Speaker 1: you know, it's just gonna be slow. I know the
Speaker 1: connectors are a little different. So I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 1: that you could plug a USB three chord. You haven't. No,
Speaker 1: they're pretty. Oh they're not pretty. It's a chord, it's
Speaker 1: a cable. Actually, the ones I saw were blue. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had some at ces um. Yeah. I you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't take a good close enough look. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain that you would be able to
Speaker 1: to plug a USB three chord into a non USB
Speaker 1: three device. However, I do think it's backwards compatible in
Speaker 1: the sense that you could use a USB two chord
Speaker 1: to connect your computer to a device. It just would
Speaker 1: move data at the USB two speed. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you had the if you had a USB two
Speaker 1: chord and a USB two device, you could they you
Speaker 1: could plug it into your computer to a USB three chord.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need a USB three device because the end
Speaker 1: that plugs into your device is going to be different. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: was that the question or were you leading up to something.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you know, all right, now hit me
Speaker 1: with your question. I had a Mexican for lunch in
Speaker 1: case that was another question, Just in case. That's all
Speaker 1: I've got. That's all you got. Awesome, fantastic. That's all
Speaker 1: I've got to except um, oh, well, you know, there's
Speaker 1: one other thing we could talk about very briefly. There's
Speaker 1: one other standard that's in development that we may see
Speaker 1: or we may never see, which is why or less USB,
Speaker 1: which I find to be sort of oxymoronic. Yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of um. And and from what I understand, most of
Speaker 1: the wireless USB, it's and we're talking about ultra short
Speaker 1: range data transfers um and shorter than Bluetooth, shorter than YEA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about really close to to whatever devices. And
Speaker 1: here's the other thing about wireless USB. There's one important
Speaker 1: component of USB that you cannot achieve wirelessly as of
Speaker 1: right now. The plug. How would be it? The power?
Speaker 1: Because um, even Tesla has not figured out how to
Speaker 1: do that. Um. Yeah, broadcasting power back and forth between
Speaker 1: your device and the computer is not not really possible
Speaker 1: right now. So, um, that part of the USB equation
Speaker 1: is null and void when you're talking about wireless us B.
Speaker 1: So if you had a wireless USB mouse, you'd have
Speaker 1: to have some kind of battery power going on in
Speaker 1: the mouse in order for you to use that device. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean I've I've got a wireless I've got
Speaker 1: a wireless mouse, but it's not a USB mouse, so
Speaker 1: and of course it has the as a docking station
Speaker 1: sort of thing that actually plugs into the computer, so
Speaker 1: it's not yeah, kind of like a dongle, dongle the
Speaker 1: French called dongle um. But yeah, that's that's that. I
Speaker 1: hope that answers your question, Leanna. The really, when you're
Speaker 1: looking at USB, you're just looking at moving data back
Speaker 1: and forth between devices and computers. You shouldn't need any
Speaker 1: sort of adapter. I mean, if you are using an
Speaker 1: old hub that's plugged into your computer and you're you
Speaker 1: realize that it's taking a really long time to move data,
Speaker 1: it might be time to buy a new hub, because
Speaker 1: it may be that the hub you've got is a
Speaker 1: USB one point one and that would be the problem.
Speaker 1: But if you know, as as long as everything is
Speaker 1: that USB two point oh, then you know you're gonna
Speaker 1: you're gonna move at pretty good speeds. There you go.
Speaker 1: So this. Um, this brings us round to uh our
Speaker 1: second bout of listener made oh man, So this comes
Speaker 1: from Jesse. Hey, guys, I just wanted to say, while
Speaker 1: I love the last podcast technology we can thank NASA for,
Speaker 1: I must admit that I was very disappointed at the
Speaker 1: list of inventions. While many of these are great ideas
Speaker 1: and benefit mankind in a nonchalant way, I found I
Speaker 1: was eager to hear about great world changing advances. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the hype climax somewhere near the mention of a space pen.
Speaker 1: Although extremely entertaining, if I am maybe cliche, it isn't
Speaker 1: the sort of thing it takes a rocket scientist to
Speaker 1: figure out. Anyways, Thanks for the entertaining podcast. Well, Jesse, Um,
Speaker 1: we thought about this, and you know, we were really
Speaker 1: looking at different technologies that benefit us on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis and the kind of things that you know,
Speaker 1: we might not have if we didn't have NASA. But
Speaker 1: if you want something that's really world changing, how about
Speaker 1: a ship that can take a man to the a
Speaker 1: freaking moon. That sounds pretty advanced. Yeah, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be a big one, I would say, UM, lots of
Speaker 1: other ones big The communication satellites. We actually mentioned that.
Speaker 1: And the ship that can launch and then return like
Speaker 1: a plane. Yeah, another big one. Um. Yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: there's some pretty decent inventions masses made that have been
Speaker 1: world changing. Um and you know who who Who's to
Speaker 1: say that the smaller quote unquote inventions haven't changed the
Speaker 1: world in some fundamental way. We wouldn't know unless we
Speaker 1: were able to look in on a world that did
Speaker 1: not have those inventions, now would we? And I have
Speaker 1: one of those inventions, but I'm not sharing it with
Speaker 1: the rest of you. Ha ha ha. So if any
Speaker 1: of you want to be mocked by tech stuff, please
Speaker 1: write to tex Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Uh no, we won't really mock you. And Jesse, that
Speaker 1: was a good question, so we appreciate it, and that's true.
Speaker 1: They were. They were pretty ubiquitous, normal everyday things. But
Speaker 1: I thought that was kind of cool that they had
Speaker 1: to invent all those things. But if you got point,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about the USB or
Speaker 1: FireWire technologies, we have articles on that at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And we will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com, and be sure
Speaker 1: to check out the new tech stuff blogs now on
Speaker 1: the How Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you