Contrary to an earlier report by CNET, Windows XP, Microsoft’s upcoming operating system, will support USB 2.0, according to an EE Times story.
The OS “will be limited in its support of USB 2.0 when the initial release hits the shelves later this year, but Windows XP will find a way to support the bus standard, the software giant said this week.”
Microsoft has chosen FireWire over USB 2.0 for Windows XP, CNET reported. However, EE Times said that the Big M is considering a number of options for getting the USB 2.0 software on the market in tandem with the Windows XP.
“How that USB 2.0 software is shipped in the final version of XP, we don’t know,” Carl Stork, general manager of Microsoft’s Windows Division, told EE Times. “It could be shipped and turned on by default if suddenly a wave of hardware hits Redmond. It could be that we ship it but turn it off by default. Or it could be that we choose to distribute it through Windows later.”
“Microsoft is evaluating the best mechanism for making [USB 2.0] available to Windows XP users upon its release,” EE Times quotes Jason Ziller, a technology-initiatives manager at Intel and president of the USB 2.0 Implementers Forum, as saying. Ziller said recent reports that Microsoft was backing away from USB 2.0 were “erroneous.”
Stork told EE Times that there wasn’t enough USB 2.0 hardware available to test when the time came to choose the bus technologies XP would support. Without that kind of due diligence, he said, Microsoft was unwilling to revisit the confusion surrounding USB 1.0’s birth, he said.