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Patrick McFarland, famous Free Software Magazine author, has written a two part article about why Powered USB is not taking off at home. (part 2 is also available) He includes a lengthy history on why USB took off in the first place, and then continues on to explain what we gain by allowing Powered USB to power all our devices.
Quote:
USB, while on a roll, partially fixed a third very important problem: some devices require a small amount of power, and it’s a hassle to run yet another cable to an AC adapter (for laptops in the field, this wouldn’t even be possible). USB provides some power to devices, up to a half an amp at 5 volts. You can run almost anything on this except traditionally large devices like printers, scanners, external media drives, and hard drive enclosures2; those require external power supplies. In addition, though this wasn’t intended when the USB Working Group designed USB, some devices recharge their batteries via USB, including a brand of AA batteries that they themselves recharge over USB.
Quote:
For Powered USB to move forward to the home desktop, I envision that both the USB Working Group and the Powered USB Working Group needs to release new versions of their specifications. First, Powered USB needs a version 2.0 (3.0?): they have to standardize on one voltage. I suggest using 12 volts, or use a floating voltage design like Firewire does (12 to 30 volts instead of 30 volts fixed), as this would be most beneficial to devices that require high voltages.
Second, I suggest the USB Working Group should release USB 3.0 already. As I mentioned before in this article, Firewire 400 is marginally faster than USB 2.0, however what I did not mention is that Firewire 800 is about three times faster than USB 2.0 and is already available in a couple devices. I expect to be able to do at least 800mbps of real performance (akin to USB 2.0’s 240-360mbps real performance) or more.
Third, I suggest that power strips (the kind you plug your computer into) add USB to Powered USB bridges that simply pass the USB data over, but add the power pins and power the devices directly from the power strip. Adding these plugs would allow people to power new devices with older computers or with smaller devices (ultra-small laptops, PDAs, etc) that can’t power devices on their own.
With these three suggestions, I can bet you that Powered USB would become a common home standard, and at least part of the cable spaghetti problem would go away, and I can also bet you that Firewire might also disappear as well.
Read the excellent article here:
http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2007/03/29/why-powered-usb-is-needed-part-1-the-short-history-of-usb/
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