USB devices and general instability

I've noticed of late that with the general proliferation of USB devices in the world, the average PC is becoming steadily less stable with multiple deivces connected.

Particularly annoying is Windows' habit of permanently associating a certain device with a drive letter, instead of next-available assignment, which is a monumental pain in the arse if you have a PC with a lot of network drives mapped in (or local drives, at that). It also make connecting multiple devices simultaneously irritating.

The entire interface bus has also never lived up to its bandwidth claims, especially when a large proportion of the USB devices on the market can't sustain the required bandwidth themselves. I never used to think there was much difference between USB thumbdrives until I got hold of some quick Sandisk and Transcend drives... WOW. I now refuse to use the cheap ones, the frustration factor and wait time isn't worth it.

I noticed a couple of posts about the upcoming USB3 standard recently, I can only hope that the technology and the devices that use it are superior to the often-disappointing USB2.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/09/ces_usb_3_revealed/

There was also some talk about the new optical USB standard:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/09/19/idf_usb_3_announced/

However I can't see how this can work with a passive device, unless the socket itself has a +DC rail in there somewhere to complement the earthed shield and power the device itself.

I also some some talk about WUSB but frankly I don't think it's a killer app unless it's totally PnP, has a wireless bubble big enough to allow flexibility but small enough to allow the creation of non-interfering piconets, and has enough bandwidth to do the job.

Personally, I'd prefer it if the industry got their collective fingers out and finall developed some sort of universal power and charging standard.... and I don't mean this sort of abortion:





















How hard can it be to develop a simple universal standard, preferably using an inductive coupling system? The Wildcharge http://www.wildcharge.com/ system is definitely a second-class hack, and still uses metallic coupling. The Splashpower http://www.splashpower.com/ system isn't perfect either by a long shot, but it's a long way closer to the holy grail of universal inductive charging.

Get it together, guys. Why can't the IEEE put together a standard for this that everyone can use? Even USB, for all of its quirks and deficiencies, works most of the time....