I remember seeing a USB 3.0 connector months, perhaps years ago, and it looked very different to the current USB plugs. Is this still the case, or have they reverted back to the old USB1/2 style?

I love the dripping sarcasm. You have to wonder who hires these idiots to state the obvious for cash.

No it's different. The actual USB wires are there for compatibility, basically, and different wires are used to actually carry data. They "should" be cross-compatible though.. that is, a USB3 peripheral can plug into USB2 (unless they shave a few pennies off, or the peripheral's too bandwidth-intensive, like the few USB2-only devices currently). And a USB3 socket should take USB2 (and USB1) peripherals.

I'm with Greg on this one, I figure it's simply inevitable that (USB version+1) will take over for (USB version). I'm actually surprised the figure's only 25% in 4 years, I expect more stuff will be USB3, whether it needs the extra speed or not.

Still trying to turn usb into a real network I see.

That's too long :(

You're right that lots of low end stuff will claim USB3 but the odds are it will be a repeat of the USB1->2 change, where USB1 devices magically became lo or hi speed USB2 overnight, no upgrade involved - just renamed.

Ain't backwards compatibility great, it allows so much lying about specs ;)

Why, oh why didn't I become an analyst...

didn't think so...

Throughput will be the issue, will it be piss poor like USB 2 or will it improve to be more like firewire.

Give me Firewire any day over USB - it's faster, more reliable and more versatile. FireWire S1600/S3200, which should appear first, will absolutely crush USB 3.0.

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Actually USB2 is completely incompatible to USB1. In fact you even have a completely different controller for both systems. If they had actually thought about the standard in the first place and consulted an electrical engeneer, they would have been able to come up with a working system in the first place.

But should I go for eSata now or wait for USB 3?

@ Scott A. Brown

The new controllers are not due to ship until the end of the year. If you need a new drive now then buy it now. If you can wait 6+ months then do that.

Sounds like another re-invention of the wheel.

As others have said, why not stick with FireWire? USB was not designed with networking in mind, while FW networks work quite well. FW 800, 1600 and 3200 seem to work as designed insofar as transfer speeds are concerned. Unfortunately MicroSoft appears to no longer support FW, IIRC.

FW also doesn't need the CPU "overhead" that USB requires, it can stand on its own hardware-wise, another plus over any sort of USB.

If only FiberChannel and similar optical hardware wasn't so expensive, you'd have gobs of bandwidth to play with.