Been fretting over the
upcoming slew of
USB 3.0 devices and your relatively new laptop's inability to exploit their full speed? Well this isn't going to help you much, but it's a great example of why you should shop with a careful eye and preferably from reputable stores. British e-tailer StarTech.com (no, we haven't heard of them before either) is now offering an ExpressCard-based USB 3.0 adapter for £39 (about $64), which seems a bargain considering the promised 5Gbps transfer speeds and general bragging rights associated with having
SuperSpeed. But here's the rub: while USB 3.0 certainly supports such speeds, the ExpressCard 1.0 device in question doesn't. In fact, you'll be limited to
a tenth half the speed the
3.0 controller onboard is capable of, leaving us to question what the exact point of this device really is. Any ideas?
Update: We've double-checked the specs and this card can in fact give you 2.5Gbps throughput, which isn't quite so terrible, but still isn't the full USB 3.0 spec which is lauded on their sales page.
posted December 7th 2009 8:27AM
@jsmrekar p.s. my int. hdds are only 1.5gbps. So limited bandwidth isn't a concern.
Shades of the eSATA express card story...
Reserve judgement until this card sees the harsh light of a test lab. This is the same company that advertises a 3Gbps eSATA express card, that in real word tests can only deliver somewhere in the region of 1.4 Gbps at best, due to the Silicon Image chipset used with that card. All cards based on this chipset suffer the same fate.
Only a single vendor using a Marvell chipset is able to deliver approx 2.2 Gbps, closer to the fashionably advertised 3Gbps and they do so at a premium.
of all people i would have thought engadget would know a company who has been around as long as startech has been. i have seen components from that company kicking around forever now. its always usb controllers and such.
Is this entry part of a contest to see how many factual errors can be made in under 150 words?
I'd still use it on my macbook pro.
2.5Gbits is a lot faster than 480mbits, especially when the bus is shared across 6 different devices like I have setup. :P
Show me an external hard drive that can saturate 2.5 Gbps then I'll bellyache about how slow the Express card interface is. (OK, there are some SSD and RAID solutions out there but I'm looking at common mass storage). I'd imagine it'll be some time before USB 3.0 devices can fill even half of the spec's bandwidth. Consider also your internal storage in most cases would be a significant bottleneck. At the end of the day 2,500 > 480 and enough throughput to bring most portable computers to their knees.
"The maximum throughput of this card is limited by the bus interface. If used with ExpressCard Gen 1.0 enabled computers, the max throughput is 2.5 Gbps. If used with ExpressCard Gen 2.0 enabled computers, the max throughput is 5 Gbps."
Engadget should really read before writing up stupid posts and correcting them again.
@(Unverified) D'you know what I love in the morning? Quotes coming from thin air. I'll give you a direct quote from the particular device in question:
"Specifications:
Bus interface: ExpressCard 1.0"
http://www.startech.com/Data/ProductManuals/ECUSB3S2.pdf
You guys should stop acting like everything we write on here is part of some giant conspiracy to defraud you or to badmouth people we don't like.
@Vlad Savov Link to thin air :)
http://www.startech.com/item-specs/ECUSB3S2-2-Port-ExpressCard-SuperSpeed-USB-3-Card-Adapter.aspx
@Vlad Savov there's no conspiracy. you just manage to get paid for writing crap. congratulations! you make bloggers everywhere look like pulitzer-winning journalists.
@(Unverified) Okay, fair enough, you've obtained it from the same source as I obtained mine for ExpressCard 1.0. What does that tell us? That's two pieces of conflicting information on the supplier's own site, and I don't even think the paragraph you quoted was there when the original post was written. I don't mind accepting mistakes (there's one stricken through in this very post), but when the supplier itself is throwing out contradictory info, you might be pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
@Vlad Savov I agree that the information is contradicting and I also believe you guys try the best to give the correct information. Have anybody tried getting a word from the manufacturer? Also an interesting tidbit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard
"It complies with PCI-Express 2.0 and SuperSpeed USB, which is part of the USB 3.0 specification. It is backwards compatible with current ExpressCard modules and 2.0 ExpressCard modules will work in current slots."
I hope the mistake is the spec sheet and the actual product is ExpressCard 2.0
@Vlad Savov http://www.necel.com/news/en/archive/0905/1801_1.html
Looking at the NEC chip specs and various articles I think the manufacturer is correct and it will support 5Gbps if used by Gen2.0 ExpressCard slot. :). The chip surely seems to be capable to handle it.
This reminds me of the old usb 1.1 fast ethernet adapters. They advertised "100Mbps Fast Ethernet" utilizing a 12Mbps USB interface.
Still, half fast USB 3.0 is still alot faster than USB 2.0. And since there isn't any better way of adding it on to existing laptops, it's really your only option.