January 29, 2003 

USB CABLING

Do you ever wonder what the difference is between USB 1.1 cables and USB 2.0 cables?  There isn’t any.  If a cable has been approved to run 12MBPS (USB 1.1) than it is also approved to run at 480MBPS (USB 2.0). We have seen some of our competitors, and some of our suppliers, raise the price on their cables just because they say USB 2.0 on the cable.  There is no need to run out and buy new cables simply because you purchased a USB 2.0 device.  If you want more details on these facts please feel free to ask us. 

We get asked this question a lot:  “How long can we run our USB cables?”  To keep it simple the answer would be 15 feet.  This is a safe answer but not exactly what is stated by USB standards.  If  I gave you the technical terminology your eyes would probably glaze over and you would start to drool on yourself.  If the words “Signal Pair Attenuation” and “Propagation Delay” excite you, then you are a true nerd and you should already know the answer to this question.  Thanks to our friends at Lava for providing this information.

4X VS. 8X AGP

If anyone out there has seen a drastic change in video performance when going from 4X to 8X AGP please send us the results.  We have performed a few tests and the results have been far from twice the 4X results.  In fact, some cases have shown 0% increase.  Eventually we will all be forced to 8X and the cost increase will be insignificant.  Was this whole thing a smoke screen to sell more video cards?  It wouldn’t be the first time.

NEW POWER SUPPLIES SUCCESSFUL

It has been a few months since we changed our most popular case to an upgraded AMD/Intel approved 300-watt power supply.  We did this because of the high failure rate we were having with the previous power supplies.  It appears that our actions were not in vain.  Our RMA rate on these power supplies is currently less than 0.5%.  The few dollars more it costs will save us both a great deal of time and money.

SPEAKING OF SIMPLICITY

Earlier in this letter I probably caught the attention of a few nerds out there.  I try to condense information, make it simple to understand, and useful to our customers.  I get a lot of emails and phone calls from nerds, like myself, who want to discuss the intricate details of the things I write about.  I’m not always right.  I admit that.  But keeping these newsletters informative and interesting to read is my goal.  One such example of this came up when I wrote about 802.11g wireless standards.  I stated that 802.11g products would not be available to us until about March.  A customer wrote me and told me that they had purchased 802.11g from Cisco earlier in 2002.  True, Cisco did have their own version.  However, the Cisco product was proprietary and will not function with the upcoming industry Standard 802.11g products.  It doesn’t bother me.  I enjoy conversing with my nerd friends!

 S&K