Some of the complaints hold true, others just sound bizarre now:
> But for the vast majority of devices, you had better have your driver disk handy
Driver disks... yeah, I think I remember those?
My biggest complaint with USB isn't there, the ports can be kind of fragile. Even without regular swapping (which the design seems to encourage), USB drives and cords slowly pry them out of position. Forget about the port if anyone bumps the USB stick or trips over the cord while it's plugged in.
The first time you plug a new brand of USB memory stick into a Windows 7 box, Windows goes out and downloads a driver for it.
So it's automatic, and it's "plug and play" in a sense, but it's just papering over the "driver disk" problem, not really solving it (i.e., eliminating the need for the custom driver).
And if the company that made the device doesn't feel like updating their drivers... well, you're SOL, probably. Buy a new scanner.
That's kind of an absurd situation. Yes, using USB is a little smoother than it used to be, but why is this the best we can do?
It doesn't download it from the internet if that what you mean. Windows 7 comes with a big library of generic drivers included.
I have a windows 7 machine that I've never connected to the internet or even a network and most things will have drivers installed automatically.
That's true, if you plug in a usb flash storage device, windows has the standard class driver locally and installs it without any requirement on internet access. Same with standard keyboards and mice.
But compare to linux. On windows, the first time you plug a particular model of usb device into a particular port, it takes 20 seconds to "install the driver" (and then it's almost instantaneous on future plugs of the same device into the same port). On linux, it's almost instantaneous, the first time and every time. New device, different port, still instantaneous.
It doesn't really make sense why it would take longer the first time, or need to happen again when plugged into a different port. silly windows...
Not only that, but vendors nowadays figured out that they can embed a flash chip with Windows drivers in the device. When you first plug it in it shows up as a disk drive that autoplays the driver setup then ejects the storage device and that's when the actual endpoint is connected which can be handled by the newly installed drivers and UI software.
Of course, autoplay has its own obvious drawbacks.
Even then, using USB devices WITH drivers beat the hell out of configuring IRQ and DMAs. I remember the ordeal it was when you wanted to add or change something and you had conflicting IRQs... pfff..
Those old enough will remember the Apple II and its fully decoded, addressable expansion slots. Each slot with specific addresses for memory mapped IO and space for a small firmware (to boot a disk, output characters to a second screen and so on).
The IBM PC looked remarkably primitive in comparison.
When PCI replaced ISA (which was prior to USB taking off), dealing with IRQs and DMAs was a thing of the past, making that a poor reason to say USB is superior.
Uhmm... I guess you are correct. I indeed remember going from PCI to ISA. Also to AGP! oh my.. the speed of that thing. But I think the point still stands, maybe not that much with that specific example, but how about PS/2 keyboard and mice?
Woops... disconnected the mouse/kb by mistake? off you go rebooting the computer. I think that does indeed make it a good reason to say USB is superior.
Because a perseverance in being stupid made the choice of a long series of bad choices.
Motorola 68K and specialized high quality embedded units? (like amiga):
no it will be overprices compared to the cough future price of an evolutive PC. Which final form are below average quality and overpriced embedded devices.
Had you followed the way of the old wise and chosen motorola architecture, you would not have theses problems. :)
I have two Kindle Fires with broken micro USB ports and I've seen two LEGO NXT robotics controllers break USB B ports. Even with DB-9 connectors soldered to boards, I don't remember a lot of breakage. I think it's because those were almost always through-hole and so much today is just surface-mount so it's relying on the pads staying adhered to the board to physically hold a frequently plugged/unplugged port in place. Crazy.
I just had to install a USB WiFi stick for someone last week... Windows didn't have a clue what it was, so I had to go track down the drivers off the vendor's website. Thankfully they were still around. :P
Work finally upgraded to Windows 7... I had to install a driver for the printer.. then yesterday we used a driver disk to get a second monitor running....
> But for the vast majority of devices, you had better have your driver disk handy
Driver disks... yeah, I think I remember those?
My biggest complaint with USB isn't there, the ports can be kind of fragile. Even without regular swapping (which the design seems to encourage), USB drives and cords slowly pry them out of position. Forget about the port if anyone bumps the USB stick or trips over the cord while it's plugged in.