I just bought a desktop (I know I'm old fashioned) that has 2 USB 3.0 inputs. So I bought a Corsair Flash Voyager Slider flash drive.

I'm amazed at how fast I can back up my keyboard content (styles, midis, text files, registrations, etc). It's 10 times faster than my USB 2.0. I used to procrastinate backing up my pen drive, but no longer.

USB 3.0 has a maximum transfer rate of 5Gb/sec making it 10x faster (under optimal conditions) than USB 2.0, which has a maximum transfer rate of 480Mb/sec. USB 2.0 is now obsolete but as we know keyboard manufacturers have yet to provide us with USB 3.0. Both the brand new Yamaha PSR-s950/750 and Korg PA600 have USB 2.0. Keyboard manufacturers are somewhere between 7 and 10 years behind the curve, so don't expect USB 3.0 to show up any time soon on arranger keyboards. The Tyros 5 (under a different name perhaps) will likely have USB 2.0 as well. It may take until Tyros 6 - (or whatever Yamaha decides to call it) i.e. until 2016-2018 before USB 3.0 becomes commonplace on keyboards. USB 3.0 was released to the public in November 2008 and here we are in 2013 and keyboard manufacturers are still milking USB 2.0. Why invest in cutting edge technology when you can milk the old technology for all it's worth? Why buy the cow when the milk is free? In other words, why spend money on R&D when customers continue to settle for obsolescence? The same principle applies to polyphony. 128 note polyphony became available in the late 1990's and here we are almost 15 years later and 128 polyphony is still the standard.

Yammie, Korg, Roland and the rest of them like to milk certain features and polyphony and connectivity are just two examples. And likely why it is that Yamaha arrangers still have sub-par drum kits compared to the competition. Thankfully Roland, Korg and Ketron believe excellent drum kits should be available to customers that purchase arranger keyboards. Yammie not so much obviously. Although I will say the PSR-s950 drums are a step in the right direction compared to Yammie's previous mid-range arrangers.

All the best, Mike

There's a lot of truth in what you say - but USB 2.0 is definitely not obsolete. My brand new Windows 8 computer has 6 USB inputs, and only two are USB 3.0 - and those are only for data, not devices.

Given the tiny size of style files, registration files, and voice files, USB 2.0 is adequate. But if Yamaha starts allowing storage of detailed samples - like a 1gb concert grand, then USB 3.0 would be perfect.

I think that Yamaha puts a lot of R&D into the style arrangements and relatively little into the technology. They haven't done much with iPad integration either. They could have lyrics appear on the iPad, apps to control styles, voices, vocal harmonies.

Coffee break! Who hasn't got a couple of minutes to spare?!

And storage backup is the least of your problems with multi GB sized sample files. Loading them into RAM is the real bottleneck. It is still so slow in most keyboards that it is impractical to do it in the middle of a gig...

But that's just the nature of closed hardware... on the one hand, you get reliability. OTOH, you get less than bleeding edge performance. I'm happier with the reliability!