What type of ports should my computer have?

USB, Firewire and Bluetooth are all ways to attach devices to your computer. Which ones do you need? Depends on the devices you use.

USB

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. It’s a simple, easy way to connect things to your computer: Your printer, your digital camera, a thumb drive, a hot plate to keep your cup of coffee piping hot, a fan, a reading light, or one of thousands of useful or useless devices that are available for use with your computer. One of the great advantages of USB is that it not only communicates information, but is also capable of transmitting power. It carries information and powers the device. Larger devices that have significant power requirements tend to have separate power cords, but small devices often rely on USB for their power.

You can’t buy a computer these days that doesn’t include at least a few USB ports. If you need more connections than what the computer came with, you can buy a hub, which plugs into one USB port and provides 4 or more ports. This way, you can expand a single USB port to up to 127 devices: More than enough for a typical user.

Firewire

Firewire was standardized on Mac computers long before it became popular on PCs. When it was competing with USB 1.1, it had a significant speed advantage. It quickly became the standard for connecting MiniDV Camcorders to computers because it could transmit at 400 MBps (MB per second), which was 20 times the rate for USB 1.1 and necessary for transferring video files. Like USB, Firewire can both supply power and transmit data.

USB 2.0

USB 2.0 uses the same size of connector as USB 1.1, but it increases the speed of transmission from 20 to 480 MBps, 24 times faster. This made USB competitive with Firewire, but with the added convenience of being backward compatible with all earlier USB devices.

Firewire 800

Firewire came out in a new, faster version called Firewire 800, twice as fast as the original Firewire. For a while it was the fastest available, but it didn’t maintain its lead for long.

eSATA

SATA is a way to connect your computer to its internal components. When you install a Hard Drive or a DVD drive into your computer, SATA is the name of the cable you’ll likely use to plug it in.

A new type of SATA for external devices is called eSATA, the ‘e’ standing for ‘external’. eSATA runs at 3.0 GBps. That means it is three and a half times as fast as Firewire 800. Until USB 3.0 is widely available, eSATA is the fastest way to attach an external hard drive, and it operates at the same speed as your internal devices.

Before, with other types of connections, there was an advantage to connecting a device internally, because there was a bottleneck if you used an external device. With eSATA, you can attach devices which will theoretically perform at the same speed as a device you install inside the computer. eSATA is really only an advantage for devices which need to pass a lot of information very quickly, like an external Hard Drive.

USB 3.0

USB 3.0 is a recently finalized standard which will soon be included on new devices and computers. It moves the top speed of transmission for USB from 480 MBps to 5.0 GBps, more than 10 times faster. That makes it more than 50% faster than eSATA. And, because it uses the same size of connector as older USB plugs, it will be backward compatible with all earlier 2.0 and 1.1 USB devices.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a way to connect devices to your computer and devices to devices…wirelessly. It’s like USB, without the wires. It’s what connects your wireless headset to your phone, and that’s how most people know the technology. Originally, it was meant to replace USB, allowing you to connect your printer or camera to your computer without the hassle of plugging in wires. But, the only place it’s really taken off and become standard is with mobile phone headsets.

Laptop or Desktop

It’s very easy to add the newest connector type to a desktop computer. You can buy a card and pop it in your computer fairly easily. It’s a little trickier with a laptop. It isn’t as easy to add in what you want later on, so it’s important to pay attention to what a laptop comes with.

What are the Essential Ports on a Laptop?

USB

The absolute necessity is multiple USB ports – USB 3.0 if you can find it. USB is aptly named ‘Universal’ Serial Bus, because at this point, almost everything uses it.

Firewire

Get a Firewire port if you’re into video editing or audio recording. Older video cameras almost exclusively use Firewire, and most of the better professional audio interfaces do as well. It is worthwhile to be compatible with older cameras if you’re doing a lot of video editing. But, a Firewire port can be added through a PC card so even if you find a great deal on a laptop but it doesn’t have firewire, you can add it in later.

PC Card

PC Card is short for PCMCIA card, which is jokingly referred to as “People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronymns”. It was a way to plug in modems and other devices back in the day which has now largely become irrelevant, but laptop makers still build them in. They’re only good for about two things: Adding in ports like Firewire that didn’t come with your machine and adding in wireless adapters.

They do a good job of those two things, though, because the cards can plug entirely inside your computer, making them very easy to just leave inside and not bother with. When you have a USB device, you need to unplug it and put it away before you pop your computer into your laptop bag or risk damaging the plug as it gets jostled around inside the bag. PC Cards just stay put, no muss, no fuss. They are often useful to have, but they’re a standard option on virtually every laptop, so advising you to make sure you have one is like advising you to make sure your laptop comes with a keyboard.

eSATA

Get eSATA if you want to use an external Hard Drive or other high-speed device, although if your computer comes with USB 3.0, then eSATA becomes redundant, and you should only get one if you want your computer to be able to interface with absolutely anything that it might have to. There’s nothing worse than being on a deadline or in a presentation and a file you absolutely need is on a device you can’t access. But, very few devices are eSATA-only. Most that have eSATA also offer USB as an option.

HDMI

An HDMI port is becoming somewhat standard on laptops these days. This type of port is solely for connecting your laptop to a Big Screen TV, but it’s a handy thing to have. Especially if your laptop comes with a Blu-ray drive, because then it can double as a component in your home entertainment system.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is nice to have in case you want to connect a keyboard or a mouse to your computer wirelessly, but this technology hasn’t replaced USB as it was originally hoped it would. I wouldn’t go out of my way to include Bluetooth, especially when you can just buy an adapter to plug into a USB port for $10-20.