Why are we not getting full 480Mbps with USB 2.0?

I was curious myself on why the High Speed USB2.0 claims to transfer data at 480Mbps (mega-bits per second). A search got me into this post which comes with a short and simple explanation:

Are you perhaps worried that you are not moving data around at the claimed 480 Mbps. If so, you would be right. 480 Mbps is the bit data rate of all the communication that occurs over the USB bus. Out of that has to come a certain amount of house keeping - this is the USB host controller actually controlling all the hubs and peripheral devices, deciding what can talk and when. Of greater impact is that USB is implemented as a single bus, thus communication can only take place in one direction at any one time. The 480Mbps therefore represents the total data rate in *both* directions [1]. The remaining significant bottleneck is that the USB host port requires considerable processor support and if the processor isn't ready to service it, then it has to wait.

Contrast Firewire, where although it is only rated at 400 Mbps (in the common IEE1394a incarnation) the actual practical data rate is significantly higher because, being a dual bus system, you get 400 Mbps in *each* direction. Equally significantly the Firewire ports are able to operate more or less autonomously without processor support and thus don't have to wait. The housekeeping requirements are largely similar buthere is no need
to hand over data direction. In practice, the differences are usage dependant, but a 33% increase in speed is the sort of minimum that you can expect from Firewire.

[1] USB1 had another drawback in that communication with slow peripherals (1.5 Mbps) operated at that speed from end to end which had a major impact on the faster (12 Mbps) communications. USB2 solved this problem by requiring USB2 hubs to buffer the data and then up convert it to 480 Mbps for transmission to the host, and similarly for reception from the host.

Vista Tweaks

Since the day I had my Lenovo ThinkPad notebook which comes with Vista Business Edition, I had been trying to tweak the OS to speed things up. I had to admit, Vista is a lot slower than XP. My friends who are Vista users also ask of possible tweaks to speed up their machines. There are plenty of tweaks found in the internet, but I come across this HowtoGeek site which groups a lot of fixes and tweaks that might be very useful one day.

There is this Fix It site from Microsoft that shows how to fix Windows issues as well.

Create, Edit, Reize Your HD Partition for Free

Paragon Software Group now has Partition Manager Express that allow users to create, move, resize and format partition. Although only works on Windows 32-bit, it is worth to be included in my blog. Below are its main features:

Redistribute Unused Disk Space

Gain additional space in an your existing partitions by easily resizing and moving partitions with through the smart Resize Wizard.

Organize and optimize your hard drive

Add partitions with the highly intuitive Create Partition Wizard. Leave a core partition to host Windows and automatically create a new partition for work and data files in a logical, intuitive place.

Prepare your hard drive for backup

Simplify the backup process by separating your data from your Operating System. A structured approach allows you to have a separate location for your OS, your data, and your backups.

Dual boot user systems

Many applications still don't work with Vista, so why not keep a copy of Windows XP? With separate drive partitions, you can install several operating systems and have a choice on startup.

Iphone Ringtones - M4R files

Iphone users who wants to add ringtones have currently one choice to do so (at least for regular users)... that's it, user have to buy ringtones from itunes store.  Searching the web shows that using itune v7.4.x, user can import any music file and have itunes convert it to AAC file.  And from AAC file, convert to M4A file then renamed to M4R.  I haven't tried this approach as I don't have copy of the old itune v7.4.x, but you can surely learn how to do using this YouTube link I found.

Incidentally, I also came across this website which have a few free ringtones.  I will continue to search for more sites which have free ringtones... or best if I can find a freeware converter that converts MP3 or any known audio files to M4R format.  I'll surely keep you all posted.

Going to Vista!

Windows Vista is not something new, in fact, it was released way back early 2007.  But it is not until just recently that I got my hand on my very own notebook with Vista preinstalled.  Honestly, I am one of the many who, as XP loyalist users, had been telling others the "Bad" side of Vista and convincing people to stay with XP.  

Just a side note...Vista comes in several flavours (Home, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate) each having its own ups and downs.  I found this website showing the feature comparison between each flavour.  Mine is Vista Business.

The very moment I started my new ThinkPad, I was like....yikes! Vista!  Okay, I admit I had not really fully used Vista before, and perhaps after more than a year in the market, Microsoft would have fixed majority of the "negative" side of Vista.  But then again, even XP still have issues as of this writing.

After two weeks of actual usage.  I have to agree with the critics, Vista is not as friendly as XP (as far as I am concerned).  My major comments: it IS slow and it is TOO protected.  Of course there are "tweaks" to make it fast, but hey, at 2.16Ghz and with 2GB RAM, I would expect it to be faster than my good old notebook with slower CPU speed with lesser memory (1GB RAM) under XP.  With the new higher specs, I would have experienced high speed computing should it had come with Windows XP.  I guess it's true, if you want Vista, go get better hardware first.

In search for "tweaking" Vista... I came across PCStats.  They had compiled 99 ways to squeeze Vista.  Click here is the link.   Of course not all of the solutions are applicable, but you can really boost a bit out of the slowness.  

But again, after two weeks of usage... I still agree with the critics.  Next few weeks might change...who knows.

Joining the World of Blogging!

Okay! for years people had been writing in diaries, and there I am appreciating their "hard work" and I had been telling myself: "one day... one day". Then came the net era where many shifted from writing their daily life into notebooks to writing them down in the internet - BLOG!

Yeah, I might be a little late on blogging, but at least that "one day" is now a reality... finally! With regards to topic? hmm... I'm looking at writing my never-ending search to make my (and probably those who read my blog) computing life easier.

For my readers, I do hope you would share your views. I would love to learn from others as well.