> But for the vast majority of devices, you had better have your driver disk handy
Driver disks... yeah, I think I remember those?
My biggest complaint with USB isn't there, the ports can be kind of fragile. Even without regular swapping (which the design seems to encourage), USB drives and cords slowly pry them out of position. Forget about the port if anyone bumps the USB stick or trips over the cord while it's plugged in.
So it's automatic, and it's "plug and play" in a sense, but it's just papering over the "driver disk" problem, not really solving it (i.e., eliminating the need for the custom driver).
And if the company that made the device doesn't feel like updating their drivers... well, you're SOL, probably. Buy a new scanner.
That's kind of an absurd situation. Yes, using USB is a little smoother than it used to be, but why is this the best we can do?
But compare to linux. On windows, the first time you plug a particular model of usb device into a particular port, it takes 20 seconds to "install the driver" (and then it's almost instantaneous on future plugs of the same device into the same port). On linux, it's almost instantaneous, the first time and every time. New device, different port, still instantaneous.
It doesn't really make sense why it would take longer the first time, or need to happen again when plugged into a different port. silly windows...
This, most of all! As a non-driver-developer, this seems completely insane.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/11/10/25504...
Of course, autoplay has its own obvious drawbacks.
"Windows Vista with SP1 installs almost 1GB of drivers on the system to support plug and play of devices"
Iirc there was a follow up on how much they removed of this for win 7 but I can't find it now.
Motorola 68K and specialized high quality embedded units? (like amiga): no it will be overprices compared to the cough future price of an evolutive PC. Which final form are below average quality and overpriced embedded devices.
Had you followed the way of the old wise and chosen motorola architecture, you would not have theses problems. :)
The IBM PC looked remarkably primitive in comparison.
Woops... disconnected the mouse/kb by mistake? off you go rebooting the computer. I think that does indeed make it a good reason to say USB is superior.
I have two Kindle Fires with broken micro USB ports and I've seen two LEGO NXT robotics controllers break USB B ports. Even with DB-9 connectors soldered to boards, I don't remember a lot of breakage. I think it's because those were almost always through-hole and so much today is just surface-mount so it's relying on the pads staying adhered to the board to physically hold a frequently plugged/unplugged port in place. Crazy.