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What is USB? |
Stands for "Universal Serial Bus." USB is the most common type of computer port used in today's computers. It can be used to connect keyboards, mice, game controllers, printers, scanners, digital cameras, and removable media drives, just to name a few. With the help of a few USB hubs, you can connect up to 127 peripherals to a single USB port and use them all at once (though that would require quite a bit of dexterity).
USB is also faster than older ports, such as serial and parallel ports. The USB 1.1 specification supports data transfer rates of up to 12Mb/sec and USB 2.0 has a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbps. Though USB was introduced in 1997, the technology didn't really take off until the introduction of the Apple iMac (in late 1998) which used USB ports exclusively. It is somewhat ironic, considering USB was created and designed by Intel, Compaq, Digital, and IBM. Over the past few years, USB has become a widely-used cross-platform interface for both Macs and PCs. |
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Popular terms beginning with 'U': |
What is Username?
A username is a name that uniquely identifies someone on a computer system. For example, a computer may be setup with multiple accounts, with different usernames for each account. Many websites allow ... continue
What is UNC?
Stands for "Universal Naming Convention," not just the home of the North Carolina Tar Heels. UNC is a filename format that is used to specify the location of files, folders, and resources on a local-a... continue
What is URL?
A Uniform Resource Locator, URL, or Web address, is a standardized address for some resource (such as a document or image) on the Internet (or elsewhere). First created by Tim Berners-Lee for use on t... continue
What is Upload?
When one computer sends information to another, it is called uploading.
What is Utility?
Utility programs, commonly referred to as just "utilities," are software programs that add functionality to your computer or help your computer perform better. These include antivirus, backup, disk re... continue
What is UDP?
Stands for "User Datagram Protocol." It is part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols used for data transferring. UDP is a known as a "stateless" protocol, meaning it doesn't acknowledge that the packets b... continue
What is Unix?
Also known as UNIX, though the letters do not stand for anything. The Unix operating system was first created in Bell Labs way back in the 1960s. It became popular in the 1970s for high-level computin... continue
What is U?
U is the standard unit of measurement for rack-mounted equipment. Racks can be used to house servers, hard drives, switches, routers, and other computer hardware. They are also used for mounting audio... continue
What is UML?
Stands for "Unified Modeling Language." This is a programming language that is used for object-oriented software development. To organize program code more efficiently, programmers often create "objec... continue
What is Unique Visitors?
Unique visitor is a real visitor to a web site. Web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and this is used to determine the number of real people who have visited a web site. If for example... continue
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