Need for Speed: Shift

Manufacturer: EA Games - Size: 3.3 GB
Open, start the computer, make sure the two handles steering wheel and start making the idea but suffocant competitions in the game.

After not being there but failed in two earlier versions and is Undercover ProStreet, EA decided assigned development rights to Slightly Mad (famous for car racing series GTR) want help with Need for Speed series spread over time of wild needle.

Same with ProStreet, game players to rein in the death race (not the police running around to visit the city as in Most Wanted or Carbon), this cause can be disappointed for some gamers, but do not over worry wheel, because, great game much what you think. The concept of "driving simulations" have been raised to a new height (though not sure that honesty with Gran Turismo) and cleverly incorporated into the traditional arcade racing form, making an error Shift has playing intriguing .

Highlights that the first Slightly Mad bring players the system fields in the world famous race as Laguna Seca, Willow Springs or Nürburgring is currently kha tai honesty, can not travel up to 100% because the same developer added some details to make it more attractive. In addition, the physical effects that great game delivers, when the "chips that" BMW M3 speed reached 150 mph, the contemporary scene will stop to dream and if "touch" to the targets over 200 mph (322 km range / hour), you'll enjoy exquisite vibration cars and feel safe any offer is presented, only a small error, the wheel slide on the surface, and carving frightening happens, there should remember that Shift factors "simulations", or reduce the gas to the crab better in the "death curve".
Players will love how to control the car in this section, no challenge to create but really not too difficult as few other game simulations, some as familiar with arcade gamers will be able to familiarize yourself a bit confused because not I also want to be future, but the most familiar and then it is very great.
Can not do not mention massive car collection that Need for Speed Shift brought, more than 60 turns to the famous brand has been "concrete" as in the Audi R8, Ford GT, Lamborghini Gallardo, Mercedes-Benz SL65 ..., all are designed very similar to life and you can still "level" at will earn the first prize in each man play.

EA graphics that bring to very good, but super-car image is true to the ear as glossy coloring, details are designed ultra-ki detail, in addition to computer "blur" has prompted the issue in the contest game impressed with the lighting effects and the launch vehicle services "spectacular". Provide adequate sound with other factors, but the text track to create a vibrant feel fire, excitement over the deadly race, engine hour whimper, Rit hours of wind, the wheel slide on the surface .... evenly excellent.
Minimum Requirement

OS - Windows XP (Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) / Windows 7
Processor - Intel Core ™ 2 Duo 1.6 GHz or faster
Memory - XP: 1 GB RAM; Vista / Windows 7: 1.5 GB RAM
Hard Drive - 6 GB
DVD Drive - 8 SPEED
Video Card - 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0 *
Sound Card - DirectX 9.0c compatible
DirectX - DirectX 9.0c compatible
Online Multiplayer - 512 Kbps or faster; 2-12 Players
Input - Keyboard, Mouse
Optional - USB Steering Wheel / Dual Analogue Gamepad

* Supported Video Cards: ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB or greater; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.
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Selling in "laptop Core i7

The poster: Ngo Quoc Tuong
The laptop uses a Core i7 has the tendency for all the gamers and high-level segment machine.
The control circuits are integrated on the chip allows the CPU Core i7 reduce the time delay and the process of exchanging data between RAM and CPU will take place more quickly. In addition other technologies such as Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading and Intel system Smart Profiles and Extrame Memory Tuning Utility, which makes the laptop has many premium features quite Vietnamese. Most of these products are used operating system Windows 7, full HD screen and here are laptops and upcoming Core i7 has appeared on the world market.
Alienware M15x

This laptop is considered as "enchanted" People play games because its configuration is equipped with processors Core i7 920XM speed 2.0 GHz, 8GB Ram, Nvidia video card left and drive GoForce GTX 260M 1GB Blu-ray. Hard disk depending on the type of "framework" when up to 500GB, or the user can select the 256GB SSD drive. June 15-inch computer screen and is equipped with full wifi connectivity, memory card slot, HDMI output ... and the price on the world market is 2.000USD.
Asus M60J

Use one of the two processors as Core i7 CPU 720QM 1.6 Ghz or 1.73 Ghz Core i7 820QM. Machine with 16-inch screen, 4GB of Ram memory, discrete graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M 1GB. This is one of the first laptop equipped with two hard drives and a total capacity up to 1TB. Asus M60J weight of 3.3 kg (with batteries). HP integrated multi-format DVD burner or Blu-ray combo drive, equipped with full Bluetooth connectivity, Wi-Fi, LAN, in addition to the HDMI output, VGA, 1 eSATA port, four USB ports and the card reader with 4-in-1 ExpressCard slot for expansion. Asus M60J will appear on the market in late October and 2.300USD price.
HP Pavilion dv8

The laptop is a home theater screen by its width to 18.4 inches and is equipped with Altec Lansing speakers with subwoofer high-specific subwoofer and Dolby Home Theater technology. Dv8 configuration is found under the "framework" to use processors Corei7 720QM 1.6 GHz CPU, discrete graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 230 1GB, 4GB and use two hard drives with total capacity of 640GB. Fully equipped computer applications like Webcam, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 2 the standard VGA output and HDMI, four USB ports, ExpressCard slot for expansion ... and the sensor fingerprint security. HP dv8 is quite heavy weight up to 4kg and the machine will cost about 2.000USD.
Toshiba Qosmio X500

A laptop is more up to 18.4 inch screen and use the processor CPU 2.8 GHz Core i7-720QM. DDR3 8GB ram, dual hard drives up to 1TB, Nvidia GeForce graphics card 1GB GTS 250m. Machines equipped with full connections like Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, three USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA port and a memory card reader 5 in 1, an integrated HDMI port, will be released in about last October and price 1500usd.
Dell Studio 15 Dell Studio 17 and Dell Studio XPS 16

All three are equipped with this laptop processor CPU Core i7-920XM 2.0 GHz, up to 8 GB Ram, Nvidia GeForce graphics card, leaving the 260M GTX 1 GB. Screen size in turn is a 15.6 inch, 17 inch and 15.6 inch. All are equipped with Blu-ray optical drive and fully integrated connections like WiFi, Bluetooth, USB ... Price of 3 products are also different, with Studio 15 is configured as the price 1500usd Studio 17 basic configuration is about $ 1000USD and Studio XPS 16 is the highest price when the 2000usd.
HP Envy 15

This is a used laptop processors Core i7 is considered RFID today and is designed luxurious and the hull is made from thin aluminum monolith. Machine with 2GB Ram, 160GB hard drive, ATI Mobility Radeon HD4830. 15.6-inch screen and weighs 2.35 kg. Machines equipped with full connectivity to WiFi, Bluetooth, USB port ... but there is no integrated optical drive that is mounted outside. The price of this laptop is about 1400USD.
CyberPower Xplorer X7-Xtreme S1

A computer "eager" and quite heavy when volume up to 5.4 kg. 17 inch screen, 6GB Ram, using the processor CPU Core i7 920, 320GB Sata hard drive and graphics card 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 meters. Fully equipped applications such as webcam, Blu-ray drive, WiFi connectivity, Bluetooth, USB connection ports. This difference is the machine using Windows Home Premium vist. The price of the machine around 2335USD.
MSI GT640 and GT 740

These two machines are using processors Core i7 720QM 1.6 GHz. Up to 4GB Ram and 500GB of hard drive is dng. Equipped with 2.0 webcam and wireless connections such as wifi, bluetooth, USB ... 6-cell battery and weighs 3.2kg including the battery.
According ICTnews

Unbound Saga

Heyday of the genre of action scenes roll (side scroller) 2D long since ended, but at least developers will continue for the life of the title game of this type to serve the gamers are nostalgic psychology neck or favorite simple structure, easy to play them. Games Workshop has released the game Vogster Entertainment - Unbound Saga (U.S.) for the PSP system is a good example.
Plot revolves around the U.S. duo Rick and Lori. For some reason objectively both accidentally touch the comic world complex. From ordinary people, Rick and Lori suddenly become real heroes đắc forced to go and deal with a series of different gang dangerous. No officers pleased with this arrangement difficult to understand, both decided together to coordinate to find clues of who had the alias of "The Maker" - who pushed them to the irony of this situation.

To help the pair find clues of The Maker, players will have to go through ten stages extending through each lair of street criminals. To meet with the enemy on the way Rick and Lori equipped with the basic techniques such as punching, stone ... In addition, throughout the journey the player can collect additional currency (token) is hidden in order to unlock more skills for characters such as stealth, recover energy faster, make the assassin and the way way more complex. One other interesting point of the game that you can switch between two characters in any action by the Select button. This way the manufacturer hopes gamers will be less boring than you enjoy and take advantage of special departments of the main characters in each different stages of each game screen.




Sadly, the idea is not so bad but the completion of U.S. Left caught quite a lot of major defects. One of them is the artificial intelligence (AI) of the rival machine which is too modest. We almost did not create difficulties for players through from beginning to end game. Therefore, players need not bother much to unlock new skills for the characters, because only a few basic techniques so they pass the screen enough to play easily. Perhaps understanding this ground that the screen layout is not playing the game points stored temporarily (check point) so that players can edit wrong. If unfortunately stumble when you have to fight hard to be implemented from the beginning stages.

Failed almost entirely on a play, listening and looking at two segments of the game does not quite do more. Wallpaper and choose whether to use color but quite impressive movements of the characters in the game is done very sketchy, hard. Quality background music and sound simulation takes place quite tedious, monotonous. With so many questions must be physically, U.S. sure many gamers will be soon forgotten though that game time was chosen to launch a relatively favorable.

Apple Boot Camp to upgrade to support Windows 7

Today October 22, 2009, Apple announced updates the Boot Camp tool before the end of 2009 to support operating system Windows 7 that Microsoft recently released.
As announced on Apple's website, the company will quickly edit the Boot Camp - the tool allows users to run Windows and Windows-based applications in a separate disk partitions on Intel Macs add. Before the end of 2009, Apple will support the operating system Windows 7 (the version of Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard operating system.

There will be nine model iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro will not run in Windows 7 Boot Camp though all of these machines are using Intel chips and Apple did not explain why. Specific: 4 model iMac (17 "and 20"), four model MacBook Pro notebooks (15 "and 17"), a model Mac Pro workstations (using dual-core Xeon processors 2.66 GHz or Intel's 3GHz).

Owner of the machines are subject to change Boot Camp virtualization technology of VMware Fusion 3.0. Expected to be launched on October 27, 2009, Fusion 3.0 will run on Macs using Intel chips and all versions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate. Mac OS to install on Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later.
According to Computerworld, October 22, 2009

Lack of human resources for market rate "urban"

Vietnam enterprises need to prepare for what market participants apply for mobile (cell phone)?
MobileApps be as large as the Internet ...
Market applications for mobile phones (MobileApps) by Juniper Research assessment scale $ 25 billion (equivalent to 445,000 billion) in five years. MobileApps application number will increase to 100,000 this year. Predicted 2020 would be about 10 million MobileApps. Market MobileApps will equally large Internet market. This is getting to be announced at the Conference MobileBeat 2009 (thang7/2009 in San Francisco, USA).
The figure is forecast more reliable when Apple said only MobileApps for its handsets were up to 65 thousand and more than 1.5 billion downloads. After the success of the Apple AppStore, including Nokia, LG, Samsung and Microsoft recently introduced its inventory MobileApps.
Americans read 3.8 billion (6760 billion) this year for MobileApps. Growth of this industry in America is 20-37% from 2006 to 2011 period and the market will reach U.S. sales MobileApps 9 billion (160 trillion) by 2011, according to research by Compass Intelligence.
In Vietnam, there were some applications such as mobile phone games, solar lunar calendar, dictionary ... but they are too small and dispersed. Some MobileApps recently been introduced: chat Vitalk (vitalk.vn) pathfinder Vimap (vimap.vn) by the Company Vietnamese Thien (in FPT) development; download music Mpod (mpod.vn), read Baomoi Mobi (baomoi.mobi) developed by Felix Studios. Vietnam enterprises are directed to this potential market. But ...

Vietnam has a seat on the market ... billion "capital"?
According to many experts, production level similar MobileApps current production capacity of computer software for end-stage 1990 the first 2000. By MobileApps development requires huge financial capacity and the technology. "To produce the commercial product MobileApps million to invest," said Bui Truong Son, Director Felix Studios, said. According to Mr. Son, different application development for the PC, application development for mobile phones, in addition to programming also requires thorough testing process on the environment. "Equipped with hundreds of phone price from under one million to the tens of million per aircraft for testing products are obstacles for many companies and a" mission impossible test "with a single programmer up, "Mr. Son said.
Vietnam has earned a place in the market of tens of billion MobileApps or not depends on the directions of the company. FPT has invested in Vietnam Thien company in this direction; Contact list nine companies invested by venture capital fund IDG Ventures Vietnam recently introduced applications for smartphones Vietnam 2.0. Lac Lac Vietnamese to Vietnamese dictionary on mobile phones. Viettel is silently deploy repositories games for mobile phones (www.upro.vn) ...

But MobileApps in Vietnam to further develop human resources needs. Unlike developing applications for computers, problems of financial and technology is still limited to very large student technology, programmers develop programming skills for MobileApps and promote creativity.

According to experts MobileApps, the technology platform like Sun's J2ME, OneApp Microsoft, Widget of Nokia or Samsung will be the ideal environment for people "amateur" hone skills and implement new ideas before bring it to an industrial process.

Alex: e-reader use Android OS

Known as Android smartphone operating system for the mobile platform will also be used for equipment to read electronic books (e-reader) Alex's Spring Design.
Alex has two screens (one went about on the other), will be launched in late 2009 with the sale price has not been determined. Spring Design was established in 2006, is headquartered in Fremont, California (USA), known to most tool published his Notes Link.
Wide-screen above 6 ", use electronic paper display technology mono, can be used to read text or message. In less than a 3.5 color LCD screen, can be used to check the news media has been hyperlinked. Alex has a headset and speaker ports, SD card slot for increased storage capacity.
Spring Design said that the Android OS will support the integration between color and black and white screen, minimize the use of batteries. Alex has the ability to browse the web, your smartphone and Android can support VoIP, working via Wi-Fi, EVDO, GSM.
Bach Dinh Vinh
According to Computerworld, October 19, 2009

Windows 7 officially launched

Planned, on October 22 Windows 7 officially launched worldwide. In Singapore, Microsoft held a press event for the Asia - Pacific, introduced the latest version of Windows this.
Microsoft Windows 7 was introduced as part of an overall solution to help improve performance, along with two upcoming product launches Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010. Windows 7 delivers a simple message: Help users to easily work with computers the way they want.
Besides the attractive features such as interface design beautiful and logical, requiring less hardware, operating faster than Vista, Windows 7 offers many benefits when work with Windows Server 2008 R2 as access directly not through a virtual private network (VPN), create a cache to save bandwidth ... Exchange Server 2010 with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 (the upcoming release) provides unified communications solutions.
Many computer manufacturers names, such as Lenovo, HP, Asus, Acer ... participated in the event, introducing the new models run Windows 7 with its own technology to help improve the performance of the machine computer, speed up boot up time Battery ...
In Vietnam, also from October 22, 2009, users can buy Windows 7 in the form of pre-installed on new computers in the store of Microsoft resellers. Vietnam has also introduced Microsoft website www.windows7vn.com with Vietnamese interface to provide information on the new operating system versions. According to Mr. Stephane Kimmerlin, director of business development and marketing of Microsoft Vietnam, Windows 7 will be held in Vietnam released in early November.
0h Singapore on October 22, 2009 right now, Windows 7 has started to be sold in supermarkets computer DigitaLife Funan Mall. According to Straits Times, hundreds of people queued to buy Windows 7 due to the discount program.

Windows 7 Review

Windows 7 gets the basics right. Here's what you need to know about the new OS.
Harry McCracken, PC World
What if a new version of Windows didn't try to dazzle you? What if, instead, it tried to disappear except when you needed it? Such an operating system would dispense with glitzy effects in favor of low-key, useful new features. Rather than pelting you with alerts, warnings, and requests, it would try to stay out of your face. And if any bundled applications weren't essential, it would dump 'em.
It's not a what-if scenario. Windows 7, set to arrive on new PCs and as a shrinkwrapped upgrade on October 22, has a minimalist feel and attempts to fix an­­noyances old and new. In contrast, Windows Vista offered a flashy new interface, but its poor performance, compatibility gotchas, and lack of compelling features made some folks regret upgrading and others refuse to leave Windows XP.
Windows 7 is hardly flawless. Some features feel unfinished; others won't realize their potential without heavy lifting by third parties. And some long-standing annoyances remain intact. But overall, the final shipping version I test-drove appears to be the worthy successor to Windows XP that Vista never was.
Microsoft's release of Windows 7 also roughly coincides with Apple's release of its new Snow Leopard; for a visual comparison of the two operating systems, see our slideshow "Snow Leopard Versus Windows 7." Of course, an OS can't be a winner if it turns a zippy PC into a slowpoke or causes installation nightmares. Consult "Windows 7 Performance Tests" for Windows 7 performance test results, and "How to Upgrade to Windows 7" for hands-on advice on the best way to install it. Read on here for an in-depth look at how Microsoft has changed its OS--mostly for the better--in Windows 7.
Interface: The New Taskmaster
The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar--especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover.
The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces Taskbar clutter. If you don't like it, you can shrink the icons and/or bring the labels back.
In the past, you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7 eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the Taskbar. Drag an app's icon from the Start menu or desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You can also organize icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new positions.
To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon--so subtle, in fact, that figuring out whether the app is running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between two icons for running apps.
In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an application's Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7's version of this feature is slicker and more efficient: Hover the pointer on an icon, and thumbnails of the app's windows glide into position above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you're looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)
Also new in Windows 7's Taskbar is a feature called Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Windows applications, except that you don't have to be inside an app to use them. Internet Explorer 8's Jump List, for example, lets you open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently visited Web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists, too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating them.
Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn't include them all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the screen and it'll expand to fill half of your desktop. Nudge another into the opposite edge of the screen, and it'll expand to occupy the other half. That makes comparing two windows' contents easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will maximize to occupy all of the display's real estate.
The extreme right edge of the Taskbar now sports a sort of nub; hover over it, and open windows become transparent, revealing the desktop below. (Microsoft calls this feature Aero Peek.) Click the nub, and the windows scoot out of the way, giving you access to documents or apps that reside on the desktop and duplicating the Show Desktop feature that Quick Launch used to offer.
Getting at your desktop may soon become even more important than it was in the past. That's because Windows 7 does away with the Sidebar, the portion of screen space that Windows Vista reserved for Gadgets such as a photo viewer and a weather applet. Instead of occupying the Sidebar, Gadgets now sit directly on the desktop, where they don't compete with other apps for precious screen real estate.
Old Tray, New Tricks:Windows 7's Taskbar and window management tweaks are nice. But its changes to the System Tray--aka the Notification Area--have a huge positive effect.
In the past, no feature of Windows packed more frustration per square inch than the System Tray. It quickly grew dense with applets that users did not want in the first place, and many of the uninvited guests employed word balloons and other intrusive methods to alert users to uninteresting facts at inopportune moments. At their worst, System Tray applets behaved like belligerent squatters, and Windows did little to put users back in charge.
In Windows 7, applets can't pester you unbidden because software installers can't dump them into the System Tray. Instead, applets land in a holding pen that appears only when you click it, a much-improved version of the overflow area used in previous incarnations of the Tray. Applets in the pen can't float word balloons at you unless you permit them to do so. It's a cinch to drag them into the System Tray or out of it again, so you enjoy complete control over which applets reside there.
More good news: Windows 7 largely dispenses with the onslaught of word-balloon warnings from the OS about troubleshooting issues, potential security problems, and the like. A new area called Action Center--a revamped version of Vista's Security Center--queues up such alerts so you can deal with them at your convenience. Action Center does issue notifications of its own from the System Tray, but you can shut these off if you don't want them pestering you.
All of this helps make Windows 7 the least distracting, least intrusive Microsoft OS in a very long time. It's a giant step forward from the days when Windows thought nothing of interrupting your work to inform you that it had detected unused icons on your desktop.

5 New Technologies That Will Change Everything

3D TV, HTML5, video over Wi-Fi, superfast USB, and mobile "augmented reality" will emerge as breakthrough technologies in the next few years. Here's a preview of what they do and how they work.

Glenn Fleishman, PC World
While sipping a cup of organically farmed, artisan-brewed tea, I tap on my gigabit-wireless-connected tablet, to pull up a 3D movie on the razor-thin HDTV hanging on the wall. A media server streams the film via a superspeedy USB connection to a wireless HD transmitter, which then beams it to the TV.
That actor--who was he? My augmented-reality contact lenses pick up the unique eye motion I make when I have a query, which I then enter on a virtual keyboard that appears in the space in front of me. Suddenly my field of vision is covered with a Web page showing a list of the actor's movies, along with some embedded video clips.
In our preview of technologies that are well on their way to reality, we look at the connective tissue of USB 3.0, 802.11ac, and 802.11ad for moving media--especially video--faster; at HTML5 for displaying video and content of all kinds consistently across all our devices; at augmented reality to see how the digital world will stretch into our physical reality by overlaying what we see with graphics and text; and at 3D TV, which will add image depth and believability to the experience of watching TV.
USB 3.0
Before you leave work, you need to back up your computer. You push a button, and 5 minutes later, while you're still packing up, your system has dumped 150GB of data onto an encrypted 512GB superfast solid-state drive, which you eject to take with you for offsite backup. On your way home, you stop at a movie kiosk outside a fast-food restaurant and buy a feature-length 3D video download on sale. You plug in your drive, the kiosk reads your credentials, and while you watch a 90-second preview of coming attractions, the 30GB video transfers onto your SSD. You pull out the drive and head home.
USB may be one of the least-sexy technologies built into present-day computers and mobile devices, but speed it up tenfold, and it begins to sizzle. Cut most of the other cables to your computer, and the standard ignites. Bring in the potential of uncompressed video transfer, and you have a raging fire.
Any task that involves transferring data between your PC and a peripheral device--scanning, printing, or transferring files, among others--will be far faster with USB 3.0. In many cases, the transfer will be complete before you realize it has started.
The 3.0 revision of USB, dubbed SuperSpeed by the folks who control testing and licensing at the USB Implementors Forum (USB-IF), is on track to deliver more than 3.2 gigabits per second (gbps) of actual throughput. That transfer rate will make USB 3.0 five to ten times faster than other standard desktop peripheral standards, except some flavors of DisplayPort and the increasingly out-of-favor eSATA.
In addition, USB 3.0 can shoot full-speed data in both directions at the same time, an upgrade from 2.0's "half duplex" (one direction at a time) rates. USB 3.0 jacks will accept 1.0 and 2.0 plug ends for backward compatibility, but 3.0 cables will work only with 3.0 jacks.
This technology could be a game-changer for device connectivity. A modern desktop computer today may include jacks to accommodate ethernet, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or 800 (IEEE 1394a or 1394b) or both, DVI or DisplayPort or both, and--on some--eSATA. USB 3.0 could eliminate all of these except ethernet. In their place, a computer may have several USB 3.0 ports, delivering data to monitors, retrieving it from scanners, and exchanging it with hard drives. The improved speed comes at a good time, as much-faster flash memory drives are in the pipeline.
USB 3.0 is fast enough to allow uncompressed 1080p video (currently our highest-definition video format) at 60 frames per second, says Jeff Ravencraft, president and chair of the USB-IF. That would enable a camcorder to forgo video compression hardware and patent licensing fees for MPEG-4. The user could either stream video live from a simple camcorder (with no video processing required) or store it on an internal drive for later rapid transfer; neither of these methods is feasible today without heavy compression. Citing 3.0's versatility, some analysts see the standard as a possible complement--or even alternative--to the consumer HDMI connection found on today's Blu-ray players.
The new USB flavor could also turn computers into real charging stations. Whereas USB 2.0 can produce 100 milliamperes (mA) of trickle charge for each port, USB 3.0 ups that quantity to 150mA per device. USB 2.0 tops out at 500mA for a hub; the maximum for USB 3.0 is 900mA.
With mobile phones moving to support USB as the standard plug for charging and syncing (the movement is well underway in Europe and Asia), and with U.S. carriers having recently committed to doing the same, the increased amperage of USB 3.0 might let you do away with wall warts (AC adapters) of all kinds.
In light of the increased importance and use of USB in its 3.0 version, future desktop computers may very well have two internal hubs, with several ports easily accessible in the front to act as a charging station. Each hub could have up to six ports and support the full amperage. Meanwhile, laptop machines could multiply USB ports for better charging and access on the road. (Apple's Mac Mini already includes five USB 2.0 ports on its back.)
The higher speed of 3.0 will accelerate data transfers, of course, moving more than 20GB of data per minute. This will make performing backups (and maintaining offsite backups) of increasingly large collections of images, movies, and downloaded media a much easier job.
Possible new applications for the technology include on-the-fly syncs and downloads (as described in the case study above). The USB-IF's Ravencraft notes that customers could download movies at the gas pump at of a filling station. "With high-speed USB [2.0], you couldn't have people waiting in line at 15 minutes a crack to download a movie," Ravencraft says.
Manufacturers are poised to take advantage of USB 3.0, and analysts predict mass adoption of the standard on computers within a couple of years. The format will be popular in mobile devices and consumer electronics, as well. Ravencraft says that manufacturers currently sell more than 2 billion devices with built-in USB each year, so there's plenty of potential for getting the new standard out fast.