Is USB the greatest pc innovation in the last 15 years??

[yoda313]

I'd think it would be right up there. Dvd burners are obviously great but their not an integral part of the pc.

I think the advent of the universal serial bus system has been the most user friendly advancement for computers in a long time. No longer do you have to fight irq conflicts or any of that stuff. It truly is PLUG AND PLAY.

[rkr1958]

I'd vote for the mouse (last 20-years) and the computer monitor (if it were the last 25-years) ... my first experience with computers was with an IBM-360. I wrote my programs on punch cards, which I feed into the card reader and sometime minutes later my output came out on the wide geen and white lined computer paper.

In fact when I started my job almost 25-years ago we programmed on punch cards, gave those cards to an operator who fed them into the card reader and then waited for the operator to put computer output in our company's designated bin. This whole process could take 30-minutes to an hour or more. It was painful to debug code ... syntax errors were a killer ...

[yoda313]

Oh ok well I'll reedit for the last 15 years then - those are pretty basic components now that you mentioned rkr.

[tweedledee]

I'd think it would be right up there. Dvd burners are obviously great but their not an integral part of the pc.

I think the advent of the universal serial bus system has been the most user friendly advancement for computers in a long time. No longer do you have to fight irq conflicts or any of that stuff. It truly is PLUG AND PLAY.

It's funny you said that. I just bought a 7 plug power hub and have had loads of trouble. It works OK with my Blackberry and Modem, but when I plug in a multi card reader it reboots my computer. If I plug in my printer the printer actually prints, but gives an error message. As far as I'm concerned it's a piece of crap. I only bought it so I can charge the Blackberry while I'm moving data across. I thought USB was easily swappable and user friendly.

[yoda313]

Hmm.... I've never used a usb hub so I can't say.

[vitualis]

Hubs are problematic if there is a conflict between the hardware on your PC and the hub. Still, USB has come a long way in terms of usability. Even Apple has increasingly placed emphasis on USB and USB2 compared to Firewire.

In terms of USB replacing the legacy SCSI, Parallel and Serial ports, then yes, they have been incredibly successful overall. I'm anxiously looking forward to wireless USB!

Regards.

[Faustus]

Best PC innovation was software, it was Windows 95. It was a piece of crap but it started the process of EVERYONE wanting a computer because they didn't have to memorize commands. Because of this we have much lower prices and much faster hardware then we would have IMO.

[isogonic]

certainly not the usb on my main computer. it works great...............as a rebooting device

[doppletwo]

Best PC innovation was software, it was Windows 95. It was a piece of crap but it started the process of EVERYONE wanting a computer because they didn't have to memorize commands. Because of this we have much lower prices and much faster hardware then we would have IMO.

Has anyone here read Dealers of Lightning?


It is about the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center?). The they developed the prototpe of Windows, known as WindowsX.


First Apple copied Xerox's design. Xerox pretty much didn't care about anything in PARC except for laser printing. They gave demonstrations of the different inventions to anyone who wanted to see them.


Steve Jobs thought that using a windows based OS would be perfect for what he wanted to do with the Apple PC.


Later Microsoft copied Xerox and Apple and then tried to sue Apple for stealing the idea for windows. Microsoft was not the giant that it is now so they lost the case.


Computer related inventions that came out of PARC include: the mouse, the monitor, the text editor, windows, the delete key, the laser printer, ethernet and more.


Basically user friendly computing came from that lab. Like people here have been saying before then you had to use punch cards or knobs and dials and switches.


Xerox wrote off most of the ease of use inventions. They required amounts of computing power that would have cost in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in the early 70s when these things were invented.

[ROF]

The growth and the continual expanding of the Graphics User Interface is by far, for me, the greatest computer innovation. 15 years ago we were just starting to see the dominance of the windows OS. Since then more and more OSs have added GUIs to their support lineup. Some better than others but in all cases these GUIs have made computer operation much easier and quicker to learn and setup. USB is a relatively new tech and when you look back 15 years ISA interface was the thing to have for PC operation.

[Cobra]

USB? My on-board VIA USB won't suppose my Canon LiDE35 scanner. I've seen a few devices act a bit funky on this USB bus. Complete compatibility? Not even close.

[tweedledee]

I'm now returning my Power hub because I've discovered that it puts a loud buzzing noise on every radio in the house. It even affects the car radio about 40 metres away.

[davideck]

USB 2.0, 1394B, and now SATA; all coexisting on one motherboard...
I think a great PC innovation would be a universal high speed interface.

[Faustus]

Has anyone here read Dealers of Lightning?

Nope but I do know the basics of the story. Poor poor Xerox.

[ROF]

I'm now returning my Power hub because I've discovered that it puts a loud buzzing noise on every radio in the house. It even affects the car radio about 40 metres away.

Which brand/model hub is this?

[tweedledee]

This is it. I hope you can suggest something better.

[thevoelk]

Try to find a name brand like Belkin, I always seem to have better reliabiity with them. I do have one wired model Belkin, when I power on the workstation, I have to unplug the entire hub and all the devices, then manually plug the hub in and the devices one at a time. Afterwards, they work fine until I turn off the workstation. If I restart, no problems.