The universal serial bus (usb) is the “old new wave” of plug and play capabilities of Windows and other operating systems. Now, installing new pieces of hardware is extremely easy, all you need to do most of the time is to plug in the device through the usb port and wait until Windows detects it. If you are using Windows XP or Vista, you will realise that Microsoft has made things even simpler by having a database of drivers for common products from a long list of manufacturers. So really, the whole process of installing something can take as little time as you plugging it in, Windows detecting it, finding the driver and installing it for you.
Most of the time, there is no need for a restart, because the usb is based on the ‘plug and play’ interface, which means that usability of the product is literally instant. The range of products that now use the usb interface has now spread to across all manners of hardware and peripherals, like the mouse, keyboards, printers, scanners, DVD drives, external hard drives etc., just to name a few. The usb 3.0 on the horizon, most issues should be resolved by then, and you will get a much faster data transfer rate and maybe even greater functionality in future.
Usb
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