{"id":4617,"date":"2013-05-24T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T07:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=4617"},"modified":"2013-05-18T12:21:22","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T19:21:22","slug":"i-want-more-usb-sockets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=4617","title":{"rendered":"I Want More USB Sockets!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How many USB ports do you have on your computer? Enough? Are you blessed with a USB 3.0 port? When it comes to USB ports, my philosophy is the more the better. You can&#8217;t have enough of &#8217;em!<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe USB port is truly a godsend. Especially when, like me, you suffered through the cornucopia of previous computer interfaces: Serial, Parallel, SCCI, ad infinitum.<\/p>\n<p>I detested the old serial port, which really could handle only one device. Put both a modem and a mouse on your PC&#8217;s serial port and you had buckets of trouble.<\/p>\n<p>The Parallel interface normally just hooked up to a printer. But then you could add other devices, such as a scanner, but that configuration was unusual and not easy to set up.<\/p>\n<p>Then along came USB and &#8220;plug and play.&#8221; It was marvelous. No more installing device drivers or having to power-down the computer just to plug in a gizmo. USB is a dream.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, of course, is that too many manufacturers are skimpy when it comes to festooning the PC case with USB ports. Let me shout this out:<\/p>\n<p>F<em>OUR USB PORTS JUST AREN&#8217;T ENOUGH!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Oh, and on a laptop? You&#8217;re lucky if you have three USB ports. Granted, mobile computing shouldn&#8217;t involve a lot of wires, but only two USB ports? C&#8217;mon!<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, USB is an easily expandable standard. Not only can you obtain USB hubs, some USB devices feature their own armada of USB ports. Then you can even add USB expansion cards to your system, giving you more primary USB ports and even USB 3.0.<\/p>\n<p>My iMac is a perfect example of a computer with too few USB ports. It sports only four. All four are used, presently, because I have 15 USB devices plugged into that computer.<\/p>\n<p>First, I have a seven-port USB hub, which is almost full of devices. Then I have an external hard drive. (The second external drive connects to the FireWire\/IEEE port.)<\/p>\n<p>My DAS Keyboard connects to another USB port, but it has two additional USB ports. One is used by the mouse, the other is hogged by the second external monitor, which also hogs a USB port on the computer itself. Fortunately, the external monitor features three USB ports, one of which is connected to another USB hub.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s a tangled mess of USB devices on my computer.<\/p>\n<p>Preferably, I like to keep external hard drives plugged directly into the computer. I suppose I don&#8217;t have to do that, and it would make things easier, but we all have our PC peccadilloes.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I&#8217;m thankful for what I have, USB overload and all. It&#8217;s still much better than the old days with the tangled ganglia of cables, devices, interface standards, and nonsense. Give me limited USB ports over that setup any day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to USB ports, my philosophy is the more the better. You can&#8217;t have enough of &#8217;em!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-4617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4617"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4644,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617\/revisions\/4644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}