(Universal Serial Bus) A widely used hardware interface for attaching peripheral devices. USB ports began to appear on PCs in 1997, and Windows 98 was the first Windows to support it natively. Within a few years, USB became popular for connecting nearly every external peripheral device. Replacing the serial and parallel ports on a PC, at least four USB ports are standard on every computer.

USB has a maximum bandwidth of 12 Mbps for USB 1.0 and 1.1 and 480 Mbps for Hi-Speed USB 2.0. Up to 127 peripheral devices can be attached to the bus, and USB 1.1 devices can plug into USB 2.0 ports. Fast devices can use the full bandwidth, while low-speed ones can use a 1.5 Mbps sub channel.

FireWire is Apple Inc.'s brand name for the IEEE 1394 interface. It is also known as i.LINK (Sony's name).

FireWire is a method of transferring information between digital devices, especially audio and video equipment. The latest version achieves speeds up to 800 Mbps. At some time in the future, that number is expected to jump even higher.

You can connect up to 63 devices to a FireWire bus. Windows operating systems (98 and later) and Mac OS (8.6 and later) both support it.