It shouldn't really surprise anyone that a cheaper VIA host interface chip would have worse performance or compatibility than a more expensive TI or Agere/LSI chip. The VIA chips were sufficient for connecting an external hard drive, and that made them sufficient for checking a box on the laptop's spec sheet.
You didn't run into trouble with USB because by that time all your USB ports were coming straight from the Intel southbridge. Even if Intel's host controller implementation had issues, it would have been the device maker's problem to work around them since Intel's market share was so large.
No modern peripheral interconnect is simple enough for host interfaces to be judged on a mere pass/fail basis. The cheap chips almost always find a way to suck, whether it's obscure like FireWire or ubiquitous like gigabit Ethernet.
You didn't run into trouble with USB because by that time all your USB ports were coming straight from the Intel southbridge. Even if Intel's host controller implementation had issues, it would have been the device maker's problem to work around them since Intel's market share was so large.
No modern peripheral interconnect is simple enough for host interfaces to be judged on a mere pass/fail basis. The cheap chips almost always find a way to suck, whether it's obscure like FireWire or ubiquitous like gigabit Ethernet.