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Re: Suggestions wanted - USB 2.0 card for G4 Sawtooth
From: uce@splook.com (Gregory Weston)
nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:
In article <uce-40B856.07344827122008@newsclstr03.news.prodigy.net>,
Gregory Weston <uce@splook.com> wrote:
unfortunately, no. usb 2 hi-speed means 480 mbps, while usb 2 means it
complies with the 2.0 spec and can have any or all of the three
possible speeds (low, full and hi).
some companies deliberately mislead consumers by claiming usb 2 and
implementing low speed and full speed. it's technically correct, but
it's deceptive.
This might sound like it's harsh commentary, but it's actually a serious
question: At what point are consumers expected to take some
responsibility for educating themselves?
at what point are companies expected to not play games and hide the
necessary information for a user to take responsibility?
What's deceptive about what you described though? There are two distinct
labels: USB 2.0 and USB 2.0 High-Speed. There's a substantial difference
in the branding in terms of the percentage of space consumed by the
logo. You seem to suggest there's something fundamentally dishonest in a
vendor not calling attention to the fact that they have not used the
High-Speed marking. I don't think that's reasonable. You advertise the
fact that you have implemented an optional feature, not that you have
not done so. No car company goes out of their way to call attention to
the fact that they didn't include a tachometer on a given model. No
orange juice producer advertises the fact that they have not added
calcium to one variety of their product. Are they being deceptive?
You claim it's "deceptive" for a vendor to label a device as USB 2.0
when it doesn't support 480Mb transfers, but why is that an inherent
truth in your opinion?
why should a user have to know the nuances of the usb spec and having
to look for the 'hi-speed' logo *in addition* to usb 2?
Because it's part of being an educated consumer, which is one of the key
- and most often absent - elements of the theoretical free market so
many of us would like to have. That was my question: At what point are
consumers expected to take some responsibility for educating themselves?
companies know
people will see 'usb 2' and think it's faster than a usb 1.1 device, so
they'll put usb 2 in big giant letters and then hide the transfer speed
on the back in print so small that even someone with perfect vision
needs to squint and sometimes it's not even there at all (i've seen
both).
in the case of memory card readers, sometimes it's even a math problem,
i.e., transfer some number of images per minute. using an average size
jpeg, i was able to get a rough idea of how fast it was. not
surprisingly, it was not 480 mbps.
As a practical matter, you're never going to see 480 Mbps out of any USB
2 device. If you got better than 12 Mb the vendor is correct in calling
it USB 2.0 High Speed.
camera makers now do it too. they're using 'dots' instead of 'pixels'
so the numbers are three times as large. even company representatives
confuse the terms, mistakenly calling a 900k dot display (300k pixels)
a 900k pixel display. if they get it wrong, how can one expect users
to keep it straight? one camera maker even lies about the pixel count
on the image sensor, using an inflated count *and* a normal count for
the *same* sensor.
An interesting example. I haven't run across it, but I'll point out that
the error in this case is not a technical one. There's no definition of
"pixel" more formal than the concept of "picture element" or, in
layman's terms, "dot. There *is* an understanding that I'd consider
ubiquitous that a pixel value includes values for all components of a
single "dot" in the active Coloring Pictures">color space and I consider it dishonest to
deviate from that de facto standard but as an implementation detail
they're not strictly incorrect in considering each component an
"element."
The difference is that USB *is* a formal standard, and a well-documented
one. Baseline USB 2 was defined 8.5 years ago. It raise the maximum
supported speed. It didn't raise the minimum.
why go through so much obfuscation? users should *not* be required to
be technical gurus just to make a purchase decision.
I agree. They should not need to be "technical gurus." I *don't* agree
that understanding that "USB 2.0" doesn't mean "faster than USB 1.x"
requires guruship. There's *got* to be some level of responsibility on
the part of the consumer for educating themselves. That's the question I
asked and that's the question that you *didn't* answer yet.
--
"Harry?" Ron's voice was a mere whisper. "Do you smell something ... burning?"
- Harry Potter and the Odor of the Phoenix
