Over the last ten years we the consumer have watched computers become faster and less expensive. In the last two years we have witnessed hardware that can process information quickly as well. However to achieve these faster speeds the past way of computing had to be abandoned. The printer port or parallel port were to slow to keep up with the these new demands. The answer to our need for speed are today USB Port connections. All new computers today come with at least two USB ports.

A computers come with a printer port, a mouse port and on the newer computers at least two USB port. The advantages of USB over all the other connections is performance and speed. With the digital video era upon us data needs to enter into the computer faster to keep up with the CPU. USB is one of those answers ( the other is FireWire) for data to be able to transfer quickly. It is comparable with many PCI based PC's and Mac's. I say many because your operating system has to support USB plug and play. Windows 98 and the Mac OS 8.6 and 9.04 do support USB.

With a USB port you can run devices that are designed with USB in mind. Hard ware presently available for USB connection are: printers, modems, speakers, scanners, keyboard, mice, joystick, and many new devices can be added as they are developed.

The USB PCI card will run devices up to speeds of 12 Mbps ( 12,000 Kb per second ) and a string of devices up to 127 per port. At present the standard parallel port speed is about 920 Kb per second. A serial port speed will average 115 Kb per second.

USB devices can be connected to your computer while the computer is on. Providing that the drivers for your device are already on the computers hard drive. You plug in the device to the USB port or hub and the computer will recognize it right away. Unplug the device and the computer will recognize this as well.

Many of todays still cameras us the USB port to download images. Images taken by the camera are down load through a single cable attached from the camera to the USB port on the back and sometimes front of the computer.

USB has become standard on both new Window and Apple computers. This offers more companies to produce hardware now knowing that there is a larger market. USB will eventually replace the printer port as USB printers flood the market.

If you have an older computer look into buying an USB card, you will find it very useful. It may even save you money.

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