USB / Universal Serial Bus for Not Yet Techies

USB / Universal Serial Bus is a new technology for connecting PCs with low and middle bandwidth peripheral devices such as scanners, joysticks, digital speakers, a digital camera or a PC telephone. It replaces all the different kinds of serial and parallel port connectors with one standardized plug and port combination. USB / Universal Serial Bus is a plug-and-play interface.

USB / Universal Serial Bus lets you connect many peripherals at one time. Many PCs come with two ports. And special peripherals -- called hubs -- have additional ports that let you "daisy chain" multiple peripherals (devices) together. This standard was developed by Compaq, IBM, DEC, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Northern Telecom.

Because some devices reserve bandwidth, the true maximum of devices is not that high. However, PCI-USB add-in cards provide an independent bus to which even more peripherals can be connected.

The data is 12 megabits per second. Thanks to another feature known as "hot-swapping" you don't even need to shut down and restart your PC to attach or remove a peripheral.

Another USB / Universal Serial Bus feature is that it distributes electrical power to many peripherals. It lets the PC automatically sense the power that's required and deliver it to the device. These connections allow data to flow both ways between the PC and peripheral.

This means you can use your PC to control peripherals in new and creative ways. For example, you can use your PC to automatically manage a telephone call center to maintain voice, fax and data mailboxes, screen and forward your calls, and even deliver a variety of selected outgoing messages. Or you can use your PC to tune a set of USB-compliant stereo speakers to match the acoustics of your listening environment.

USB / Universal Serial Bus is currently a key feature on virtually every new notebook. One great advantage of it is that it allows notebook users to easily share peripherals.

Another plug-and-play standard, IEEE 1394 supports even higher data rates. However, it is much more expensive than USB / Universal Serial Bus and so serves different devices.

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