So the European Union has said, you must use USB as the charger for all cell phones in Europe going forward.  In fact, the EU estimates that there are over 1 Billion Phone chargers sitting around Europe that are simply garbage.

By changing over to USB as the standard connector, this will eliminate the need to build and eventually destroy or dispose billions of non-USB chargers.

Eventually you will buy a phone, and the power adapter won’t be included because you’ll already have one.

Pretty cool

Here’s the videos talking about it

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Windows 8 from a USB 3.0 Flash Drive

At the Build Conference, Microsoft  introduced something called “Windows To Go” 

This lets you boot Windows 8 on a USB Flash Drive, so you no longer have to carry around a whole computer.  You could carry around USB Flash Drive that has your entire Windows 8 workspace, software, music files, browser bookmarks, Work files, and other elements.

So you could have a Computer at Work and a Computer at Home, and you would just carry the USB drive back an forth.  You wouldn’t need to contaminate your home computer with work materials.

So how does this work?

• You reset your BIOS to boot from USB
  • BIOS is the firmware/software that starts up your computer before the Windows operating system starts
• Plug in your USB Drive
• Start up your PC
• Windows 8 will load from your USB flash drive
• All your software/applications will be available
• Files will be stored either on a Windows Live SkyDrive (Windows Cloud I’m guessing this is)
• When you shutdown, you take everything with you on your drive.

This works with USB 2.0 okay, but it will work better on USB 3.0. It will boot faster.

Win 8 demo on a MacBook

Here’s a demonstration of Windows 8 using Windows To Go on a MacBook run by ExtremeTech

Better on USB 3.0

The Microsoft Speaker at the //Build conference said that the USB experience will be “much enhanced” with USB 3.0.

To me this means it will boot faster and run faster, more like an SSD inside your PC if you have both a USB 3.0 Flash Drive and fast flash memory.  The free USB memory sticks you get today, the cheap ones you get at Target, FNAC, Metro, NOVA, BestBuy, Gome, or Yodobashi Camera.  You need to buy the more expensive drives. 

If you watch the video below, and advance to 27:00 (27 minutes) then you can see what happens when you unplug the USB drive while running Windows off of it. Basically, the PC will give you 60 seconds to re-insert the drive and resume, or it will shut down. You will see that Win 8 resumes cleanly, resuming a video playback, if you re-insert the drive within 60 seconds.

Here are some tips to view the video, in the lower right corner, click “Format”, then choose “Smooth Streaming”, then advance to the time slot of 0:27:00 for the Windows To Go Flash Drive removal and re-insertion.

The Windows USB 3.0 Logo Program has an additional requirement for a USB Windows To Go Drive
It will require that a USB drive can withstand many,many Win 8 file accesses over a 2 year lifetime.  This means it needs to be able to have Win 8 running on the drive and constantly being accessed over time. USB 3.0 Logo Program requirements are discussed at 28:50. on the video above.

For an even better article on the Windows To Go feature running on a USB 3.0 Flash Drive, you can go read the ExtremeTech article here.

Next Week: (Maybe) Pictures of Thunderbolt products.  (Definitely) How USB will save the earth from it’s doom.

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At IDF 2011, we saw a lot of new Thunderbolt peripherals. Mostly storage, but a few docking stations. I will post my pictures of those tomorrow.

It appears that Thunderbolt will remain a chip solution and the Innovator that created Thunderbolt will bring out cheaper chips according to Ars Technica.  Also, PC makers like ASUS and Acer may bring out Ultrabooks supporting Thunderbolt. I should point out that Ultrabooks are equivalent to MacBook Air and are more expensive than standard laptops by 50-70% or more.

This also looks to me like Thunderbolt will not be made available for SoC integration.

This means product makers can’t build their own IP (and IP providers like Synopsys can’t build it either) to bring costs down. 

This means Thunderbolt PCs and Peripherals will have an additional ~$25 (my marketing estimate) added to their selling price. This doesn’t mean a lot to people buying 30 inch Apple Cinema displays, but people buying portable hard drives tend to try to keep their purchases in the range of $100.

I truly believe that USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt complement each other. I’m going back to an blog entry I wrote in February “Thunderbolt vs. USB 3.0”

Jason Ziller leads the strategic planning and marketing behind Thunderbolt.  He also launched USB 2.0 about 13 years ago.  Ziller talked to PC Magazine.

“Ziller, who was once chairman of the USB Implementor’s Forum, said that USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt were "complementary". "We don’t see this replacing USB," he said. ‘We see it as complementary to USB… Intel will fully support and work with that technology." See the PCMag.com article here.

(Apologies to Jason, there’s a typo in his last name in the original article in February)

Go back and look at that article on “Thunderbolt vs. USB 3.0”  and read “How about some facts about why Thunderbolt will not pass up USB 3.0?” for all the reasons why USB 3.0 will succeed now.

Thunderbolt will succeed in the near term for high end applications by users that can absorb the cost for storage devices. In the long term, docking stations and docking stations in monitors will drive mass adoption. (Pictures of current devices tomorrow).

As Windows 8 launches with USB 3.0 and the chipset makers launch with chipset support, we can be assured USB 3.0 will succeed with over 1 billion devices to be shipped in the next 2 years.

Thunderbolt and the Self Serving Marketing Guy

Yes, this is self serving, but I’m PMM of the USB 3.0 digital cores so what did you expect?

It doesn’t make me less right.

I like to be right once each month. We are already halfway through the month. So this could be it for me.

I’m now including lots of Hyperlinks back to my articles to:

1. Increase my hits, so click away,
2. Show some diligence, back up my wild claims
3. Make it easier for you to find your way back to my articles, and the original sources on the internet without repeating everything over and over and over.  Let’s face it, no one wants to hear the sound of my voice that much.

I’m really regretting looking at those entries since I’ve finding lots of typos.

Thanks to those people that send me personal e-mails on my Kindle Review Blog Entry and Donuts.

This week: Pictures of ThunderBolt, Booting from a USB Drive with Windows To Go, and new USB Standards

Despite the fact that you know me, please

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1+ Billion USB 3.0 Devices in 2 years

During the USB 3.0 session at IDF 2011, Jeff Ravencraft pointed out that in the next 2 years, over 1 billion USB 3.0 enabled products will be shipped. For a second I thought about it, and then I realized “Yes, that’s true.”

So I pulled up the InStat data from the Microsoft Blog site that shows exactly this data.  The Green Bar below is USB 3.0 shipments.

Here’s a link to my Blog entry, you can find a link to the Microsoft Blog entry ther.

My Funny, My Friends

I sent my friend the following note with a link to “My Kindle, My Donut” article as follows:

“When you get a chance, take a look at my latest blog entry:

http://synopsysoc.org/tousbornottousb/2011/09/digital-downloads-donuts-free-donuts-or-how-the-kindle-made-me-fatter/

I know you wait eagerly to read it each week.   I would like your opinion as follows:

1) Is it funny only if you know me?

2) Is it funny on its own?

3) Is it not funny.”

My Friend responded:

“I know you and I still think it’s funny”

Some needs to explain to me what this means.

Windows 8 support for USB 3.0 – Keynote Demonstration

Following up in the Microsoft Blog Announcement of Win 8 support for USB 3.0, Steven Sinofsky gave the first USB 3.0 demonstration on Windows 8.  It is a 2 hour video, so don’t watch it now.

To see the 20 second demo, here are some tips to view the video, in the lower right corner, click “Format”, then choose “Smooth Streaming”, then advance to the time slot of 1:13:05 for the on stage demonstration of USB 3.0

The demo is quick, as it should be, and easy to miss.  It’s like the expectation that USB 3.0 be quick and easy.

Microsoft demonstrates Windows 8 on range of devices including TI OMAP and Atom based tablets, so we can guess this means we will see USB 3.0 support beyond the PC. 

This is a good sign for USB 3.0

Occasionally, we have donuts in the office.  They magically appear.

I eat the tops off 2 chocolate donuts, then throw away the bottoms.  It’s my way of “Cutting back”

I will come back to the donuts in just a moment.

My Kindle, My Son

I received my Kindle yesterday at  6:42pm. I handed it my son, and left for a 2 hour meeting.

When I came back at 8:17pm, he was reading it.

My son informed me, “The 3G is fine, I can buy books that way.”

Apparently he had bought some while I was away.

- The Kindle allows you to buy books over 3G “forever” without WiFi.

I spent 2 min setting up the WiFi, 5 min finding books with my son.  We found 3 Mark Twain books, and 2 books on King Arthur that were free.

It turns out that lots of books, classic books are available for free on the Internet in PDF or for the Kindle, Nook, any eReader…  Totally free.

(Also plenty of romance novels also).

I had to tear the Kindle out of my son’s hands at 10:12pm.

My Kindle, My Mom

When I was small, my mom read to me every night.

I’m sure if your mom loved you she would have read to you.

Well, it turns out the Kindle can now replace your Mom.  It will read to you out loud.

It’s not awesome, not like a voice actor or radio or HAL from 2001, but it’s okay. 

Video demonstration at the end of this blog (read the rest of my blog first, please)

My Kindle and USB

I charged my Kindle via USB to my computer. The Kindle shows up as a Mass Storage device, like a flash drive.

My Kindle, My Donuts

So as I walked by the donuts this morning I thought:

”If I eat enough of these donuts, I don’t need to eat lunch and I can save my money to buy more books to read on my Kindle”

My Thanks

To my Readers, Readership was way up for August, a tough month since Europe and Japan are on vacation, so that made it exceptional.

Given the amount of time I spend on this each week, (Yes, hard to believe) your readership is important to me.

There are thousands of you (yes, also hard to believe) so keep forwarding to your friends and enemies.

Thanks to my mom for reading to me. I’m sure your mom loved you too, even if she didn’t read to you.

And thanks to Preston Hunt for encouraging me on the Kindle. 

I’m definitely buying at least 1 more for My Son

Who I love but don’t read to.

That’s what his Kindle is for…

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Demonstration of the Video Text to Speech on YouTube