ego.istic.org

I have thought, as have many others, that making USB 2.0 ports visually indistinguishable from USB1.x ports was a bit of a design failure. Sure, it's desirable to allow USB 2.0 devices to be plugged into USB 1.0 ports, and USB 1.0 devices to be plugged into USB 2.0 ports, and TBH I'd be hard-pressed to design a port that's different from USB 1.0 but still compatible both ways. But even a colour-coding scheme would be preferable to the current situation. I can't remember which of the ports on my motherboard are 1 and which are 2, and I daresay the great unwashed of computer users don't even know there's a difference, and are silently accepting the silent performance degradation on their devices.

Today at work I plugged a USB 2.0 mass storage device into the USB port on the front of my desktop box, a Windows XP (64-bit) machine, and was surprised to notice a pop-up message in the corner of my screen, telling me that my device will run faster if I plug it into a USB 2.0 port. It's a very weak warning, less useful than distinguishable ports would be, but it's something.