Page 797 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

External Gadgets

Over the years, various engineering organizations have devised an almost

silly number of connectors for printers, scanners, and other peripherals. The
back, side, or front of your PC may include any of these connector varieties.

USB Ports

Man, you gotta love USBs (Universal Serial Bus). The more of these jacks

(also called connectors or ports) you have, the better.

The USB port itself is a compact, thin, rectangular connector that’s easy to
plug and unplug. It often provides power to the gadget, saving you one

more cord and one more bit of clutter. And it’s hot-pluggable, so you don’t
have to turn off the gadget (or the PC) before connecting or disconnecting

it.

Tip
Be careful, though, not to yank a USB flash drive or hard drive out of the PC when it might be in
the middle of copying files.

USB accommodates a huge variety of gadgets: USB hard drives, scanners,

mice, phones, keyboards, printers, palmtop cradles, digital cameras,
camcorders, and so on.

Most modern PCs come with at least two USB ports, often on both the front

and back panels.

Note

Today’s USB gadgets and PCs offer USB 3.0 jacks—a faster, enhanced form of USB. You can still
plug the older, slower USB 1.1 and 2 gadgets into USB 3.0 jacks, and vice versa—but you’ll get
the older, slower speed.

USB-C