As your video, game, and music collections grow, so does the time required to move it from one computer to another. Whether you’re backing up a years worth of pictures to a flash drive, pulling the family vacation off the camcorder, or saving all your all important musi-…um, tax files to an external hard drive, you’re not going to appreciate having to sit around waiting for it to get done. You want it finished now.

    Surely your computer has the connections you need, but are you wasting your time with an unnecessarily slow connection? Rather than take the time to learn about the different technologies, most users will simply choose to not care whether they’re using their computing time effectively. But you - YOU, will care. And you will use this knowledge to amaze your friends and frighten your enemies.

External connections

USB 1.1 – This 1st generation Universal Serial Bus connection is found on all PCs which are Pentium II or faster. Maximum throughput on this port is 11Mbits (1.5MB) per second.

USB 2.0 – This 2nd generation Universal Serial Bus connection is found on most new PCs, but there was no clear jump like when USB 1.1 hit the market. Maximum Throughput on this port is 480Mbits (60 MB) per second.

FireWire 400 – This 1st Generation FireWire connection is found on about 30% of PCs by default. Maximum Throughput on this port is 400Mbits (50MB) per second.

FireWire 800 – This 2nd Generation FireWire connection is currently found on very few PCs by default. Maximum Throughput on this port is 800Mbits (100MB) per second