Essential Guide to Home Networking Technologies, The

USB

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. It is a bus standard that was originally specified in 1995. The major goal of USB is to define an external expansion bus that makes adding peripherals to a PC as easy as hooking up a telephone to a wall jack. Virtually all new PCs come with one or more USB ports. In fact, USB has become a key enabler of the Easy PC Initiative, an industry initiative led by Intel and Microsoft to make PCs easier to use. This effort sprung from the recognition that users need simpler, easier-to-use PCs that don't sacrifice connectivity or expandability. USB is one of the key technologies used to provide this. Today, version 1.1 of the USB standard is enjoying tremendous success in the marketplace, with most peripheral vendors ...