The new standard for USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has released the specifications for its next major upgrade. USB 3.0 is meant to surpass its current predecessor USB 2.0, which supports up to 480 Mbps data transfer. The USB 3.0 will support speeds up to 4.8 Gbps, roughly 10 times faster than USB 2.0.
The new standard is expected to be more power-efficient over its predecessor. Your old devices will not be garbage just yet, since USB 3.0 will be fully backwards compatible with your old devices, supporting USB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0.
The switch over from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 on your hardware will hopefully take place late in 2009, where media devices will be the first to see the upgrade in things such as, external hard drives, flash drives, digital cameras, and personal media players.