The market is full of "good enough" solutions. AOL, Windows, Solaris, Oracle, Linux, Mac...

Hasn't the industry gotten the message?

They hyped the heck out of USB and we suffered for years with inadequate implementations and slow-to-market products. Now it (some of the time, when you hold your mouth right) works.

IEEE1394 may fill a niche need (video), but otherwise it seems like this latest push is another attempt to get the masses to buy a new computer.

For now the boxes we haveare adequate to more-than-adequate. I'm writing this on a 350Mhz PII that is a big-name commercial unit I got factory refurbed WITH the OS for $171. And the only thing I need my faster machine for is bloated stuff like not-yet-optimized development software (.Net Beta stuff for example).

Even THIS box could have a bigger HD and a faster CPU installed (both) for about another $200. If I ever need "$wire" I'll buy a card and call it good.

The desktop market is saturated - get a clue. Until the next global power-pig comes out (last one being multimedia, previous GUI interfaces) we're set.

In other words, USB ain't great but it mostly works and is cheap. I'm not buying a new box just to get $wire.