This Week’s Word: USB

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. There’s a pretty good chance that you are using a USB port on your computer right now. That’s because USB ports are used for printers, keyboards, mice, external hard drives, cameras and many other devices. The USB ports on your computer are small and rectangular. They are also typically marked with the symbol at the left.

If you have been using a computer for many years, you likely remember a time before USB ports were so commonplace, whether you realize it or not. Printers, for example, used to be attached with a wide, thick cable. It took a couple minutes just to get it in the port correctly and get it all tightened up. Keyboards and mice also had their own different ports. USB is very useful, because as it’s name states, it is universal. It is the same port for your printer, keyboard, camera, etc. This makes it much easier to locate and connect to.

Your computer comes with some USB ports. This varies from model to model. My 13″ Macbook Pro, for example, has two USB ports, but a desktop computer would have significantly more. If you have more USB devices than you do ports on your computer, you can purchase what is called  a USB hub, which is a device which plugs into one of those ports and will then give you several more ports to work with.

There is also a small device which is sometimes called a “USB drive”. It goes by many other names as well, such as flash drive or thumb drive. It is a small device which can hold a small amount of data. USB flash drives come in varying sizes, anywhere from 256mb to 64GB. They are relatively affordable and they can be handy for transferring data from one computer to another or keeping an extra of an important document on hand.

There is some very basic information on USB! Questions are always welcome.

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