Community News and Announcements

[#1]

USB 3.0 is the new industry standard for connecting peripheral devices (such as mice, keyboards, and headphones) to computers. Use of the USB 3.0 standard is expected to grow rapidly. 

This new standard uses what is called Spread Spectrum Clocking which can affect how some peripherals perform. Spread Spectrum Clocking produces a broad spectrum of radio frequency (RF) radiation. To other wireless devices, this RF energy can create “noise” which may cause interference. Unfortunately, the Spread Spectrum technique produces a significant amount of RF noise in the 2.4GHz band which is widely used throughout the computer industry for wireless peripheral devices such as mice, keyboards, and headphones.

Depending on both the quality of the PC and the USB 3.0 peripheral device, it is possible that the RF interference may result in a significant loss of range for many wireless products. 

This interference may result in: 

• Delayed response to mouse or keyboard inputs
• Missing keyboard characters or mouse commands
• Decreased operating distance between the USB 2.0 wireless device and its receiver

There are some techniques that can help early adopters of USB 3.0 to mitigate potential problems with their existing 2.4GHz wireless devices:

• If your PC has multiple USB 2.0 connectors available, separate your USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 receivers by as much distance as possible. For example, if your PC has a choice of USB 2.0 connectors, use the one on the opposite side of the PC from the USB 3.0 connector.
• Position your USB 2.0 receiver as close as possible to your wireless peripheral (mouse, keyboard, headphones, etc.).
• Use a standard, USB-adapter cable to position your USB 2.0 wireless receiver as far away as possible from your USB 3.0 connector.

Note: A USB 3.0 connector, sometimes referred to as Super Speed USB or SS, normally has a blue plastic insert in the connector. Unlike a USB 2.0 connector which has 4 pins within the connector, a USB 3.0 connector has 9 pins.

[#2]

There is more on this topic in an earlier message from a user who did some of their own research:

Re: Unifying Receiver stops working when a USB 3.0 device is plugged in 

That message includes a link to a report From Intel, describing experiments to study this phenomenon.

One conclusion is that kitchen foil comes in handy.

[#3]

So what is being done to fix this? Are you going to be making new hardware with 3.0 USB? or having some software that helps this issue? It is ridiculous that you can't put your computer to sleep and have it wake up to not having the harware work right cause of the USB controller not being 2.0 cause your system doesn't have any 2.0 ports and the LGS software doesn't work right and has an issue with 3.0 and an even bigger issue with AMD graphics drivers. When are these issues going to be addressed and what are you going to be doing to compincate customers for poor software, making their system crash and havign so many problems trying to use your hardware with systems that you logitech have not tested any of your harware and software on and are not willing to fix any of these issues !! What do you have to say for your self !!!!

[#4]

Hkharpster - We resolved your issue over facebook, but your issues were different than the issue outlined here. The driver crash you experienced was worked around by disabling LGS's request to use the GPU (the next graphics card driver update from your Laptop manufacturer would likely resolve the issue), and the wake-from-sleep issue you were seeing is likely related to your motherboard's powersaving routine on the USB ports while asleep. That issue might be resolved better by a driver update to the USB chipset of your laptop.

The issue described here is a notification from us that we have identified that some USB 3.0 controllers and some USB 3.0 devices can cause large amounts of electromagnetic interference, impacting the range of wireless devices. Your issues are likely related to the drivers that are on your system: In the past, LGS crashed on ATi systems were resolved by an update from AMD, and many times wake from sleep issues are often resolved by updating the USB controller drivers on your system.

[#5]

It is interesting to see a post dated 14 December 2012 referencing Bluetooth 3.0 (adopted 21 April 2009) but not addressing Bluetooth 4.0 (adopted 30 June 2010).  Has logitech adopted the power-saving features of Bluetooth 4.0?

[#6]

I don't mean to seem rude, LogicTech, but you DO know the difference between USB and Bluetooth, don't you?