USB 3.0 Ports Appear on New Asus M50 Laptop, Sorta

Last we reported to you that the socket and cable design for USB 3.0 had been revealed. Now it appears that it has actually been in production for some time now, sorta. Register Hardware reports that they have seen Asus' team demoing their new M50 laptop and it has non-functional USB 3.0 ports. The pins on the connector for the USB 3.0 pins appeared to be missing but the connector itself had the grooves and holes for it.

The Asus team was apparently unaware of this and you would have thought that if they knew, they would have been flaunting it as USB 3.0 capable/ready. This is quite promising that manufacturers are already preparing to incorporate USB 3.0 into their hardware and it instills a lot of hope in us that we will be enjoying the increased speed and benefits of the new bus standard. There doesn't appear to be any release information for the M50 yet, so it might just be the first laptop to sport the increased speeds.