Introduction

There have been many new technologies released in the last six months that have changed many aspects in our daily computing lives. Some might be impressed with the new high speed video cards or even the current round of SATA II busting solid state drives, but the one technology that will impact us the most has to be USB 3.0. USB is a standard that is unrivaled in the industry. There were times when other technologies promised to defeat the standard, but they were merely a small bump not even worthy of mention in this article. Having one standard dominate all others might be a bad thing to governments and those who think that everybody and everything deserves the right to shine, but when it comes to inoperability between all of my components, I will take a good monopoly any day.

The latest revision of USB 3.0 is undeniably a great leap forward, but economic conditions have slowed the mass adaption of the technology. Intel has a bit of a roll as well, choosing to stick to their tick tock launch schedule that has their major debut of USB 3.0 hardware scheduled for sometime in the middle of next year. After NEC announced massive shipments and most likely will bring in huge profits, Intel announced that they will introduce an add-on chip by the end of 2010, but true Southbridge USB 3.0 for big blue is still a long ways off.

In the meantime we have NEC and their partners who are making add-in boards that will allow the integration of USB 3.0 into your existing motherboards by way of PCI Express. Many computers used today have an abundance of open PCIe slots making for a very high compatibility rate.

Today we will be taking a look at the VIZO SPEED-UP USB 3.0 Host Card that is one of many new low cost products on the market designed to provide you access to the new USB 3.0 universe.