Ports are pathways that connect your PC to external devices, orperipherals as they are called. Up until recently they were always located atthe back of the PC. They are now often found on the front of it as well.
USB
USB (Universal Serial Bus) has become one of the most popular ports found on aPC. All new PCs have at least 2 USB ports. Printers, scanners, and many otherperipheral products have USB ports which makes it very easy to connect them toyour PC.
USB is very user friendly and supports what is called Plug'n'Play. This meansthat when you connect a device to your PC with USB, it is automaticallydetected and set up without your intervention. In some cases, you may have toinstall a device driver provided by the manufacturer on a CD or on their website.
USB is available in a couple of standards. USB 2.0 is the fastest at 480Mbps(million bits per second). The earlier USB 1.1 runs at 12Mbps.
Firewire
Firewire is another type of port found on newer PCs. It is also known as i.LINKor IEEE 1394 and is rated at 400Mbps which puts it in the same speed class asUSB 2.0.
When Firewire first came out, only USB 1.1 was available and many observersthought it would push USB out of the picture. With the advent of USB 2.0 andit's proliferation into so many peripheral devices, USB is here to stay.
Flash Card
Many new PCs provide ports for reading and writing flash cards. This allows youto access data directly from the flash card without having to connect yourdigital camera or PDA.
Recently I saw a new PC from HP that had a port with multiple slots forconnection to many flash card types: Compact Flash I/II, SmartMedia, MemoryStick/Pro, MultiMediaCard and Secure Digital.
If you use a PDA or digital camera this type of port comes in very handy.
Legacy ports
Most PCs still have parallel, serial or game ports. These ports are always puton the back of the newer PCs and will eventually be phased out.
Recommendation:
Buy peripheral products that use a USB port. Why? Every PC produced in the lastfew years has at least 2 USB ports on it. This makes it a given that mostdevices can connect to a PC and run right away. Most camcorders, however,connect to the PC through a Firewire port.
Make sure you know what USB standard your PC supports. It may only support theolder USB 1.1 type.
If you want to connect more than two USB devices to your PC, where would thethird one plug in? The solution is provided by a device called a USB Hub. Itplugs into one of the PC's USB ports and allows from 4 to 8 USB devices to pluginto it. The ability to quickly scale up and connect to multiple devicescombined with the fact that almost every peripheral has one makes USB the portof choice.
If you have devices that use flash cards, then a PC equipped with ports thatcan read and write them is quite useful. If the PC doesn't have this type ofport built in don't worry, you can connect an external flash card adapter toyour PC later on using - what else - a USB port!