Windows 8 to fully support USB 3.0

From CNET News.com: Microsoft is promising full support for USB 3.0 in Windows 8.

In the latest installment of the company's new "Building Windows 8" blog, Dennis Flanagan, the director of program management for the Devices and Networking group, discussed the need to support the latest high-speed flavor of USB despite certain difficulties in getting there.

Introduced in 2008, USB 3.0 offers not just faster transfer rates over previous versions but also better power management and battery life.

Citing data from research firm In-Stat, Flanagan noted that by 2015, all new PCs will come with USB 3.0 ports, while more than 2 billion USB 3.0 devices will be sold in that year. As a result, the decision to support USB 3.0 in Windows 8 wasn't a hard one. But at the same time, retaining backward-compatibility with all the older USB drives out there proved to be a challenge.

"While we were focused on building support for USB 3.0 chips inside the PC, we couldn't ignore the world of devices," Flanagan wrote. "We had to think outside the box - literally. There are over 10 billion USB devices worldwide. Some are in use daily and some are tucked away collecting dust, but all were originally designed to work with Windows PCs. Compatibility is the Windows promise. Our customers have grown accustomed to expecting new versions of Windows to work with their existing devices and drivers."

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