I have a Dell Latitude D620 notebook with Windows XP SP2. Whenever I
connect devices that are USB2 capable, they function at USB2 speeds,
EXCEPT my Sony DSC-S500 camera. Every time I connect it, I get the
"This Device can perform faster...." popup in the system tray. The
camera is USB2.0 capable, and is the only device that I have this
issue with. I have tried unistalling the USB Mass Storage Device in
the Device Manager, but that did nothing for me. Any help would be
appreciated.
I was able to do some more reading and found the answer I was looking
for. My camera is "Full Speed USB2.0 Compatible", not "Hi-Speed
USB2.0". Here is the information that I found:
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A couple of readers have also mentioned the old "Hi-Speed"/"Full
Speed" problem. "Hi-Speed" is the 480 megabit per second speed
(theoretically, at least - no USB 2 device actually manages to move
more than about 240 megabits per second) that people think of when
they see "USB 2" on a sticker.
"Full Speed" is the old 12 megabit per second speed that was the most
USB 1 could manage. So someone who's trying to rip people off could
make a label that says "USB 2 Full Speed!" or something and kinda-
sorta be telling the truth. It's perfectly possible to have a device
that's fully compliant with the USB 2.0 spec, but which doesn't use Hi-
Speed mode. Usually, that's because the device has no need for Hi-
Speed, because it's a mouse or a keyboard or a USB sound "card" or
something.
This is a technical quibble, though. If you see "USB 2" on the label
of a storage device, you should obviously expect it to be able to
transfer data faster than a USB 1 device could, just as you should
expect a car sold as having a turbocharger to have that turbocharger
actually plumbed into the engine.
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So.. it looks like the camera is not capable of going any faster than
12Mbps after all.
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You are right about the USB2 specs and the anomoly it has created. And
Sony *is* a company that has resorted to describing fast speed only
equipment as USB2. However a device which is not high speed capable should
not produce the perform faster error message.
My junior spies tell me that the camera you refer to should be a high speed
USB capable device. The first thing to do therefore is check the cable
being used to connect it - try a cable known to work at high speed. I have
noticed that Sony have taken to supplying some fairly abysmal bits of
string. If that doesn't work, try the camera on another High speed capable
PC. If that too gives you the error message, then it is most likely that
the High speed port part of the camera is faulty. The fast and high speed
ports are physically different ports that are switched automatically as
required.
If the camera has developed a fault, you can always put the memory stick
into a true USB2 external reader and read it that way at high speed.
