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USB (short for Universal Serial Bus) is a way of connecting to a PC or a Macintosh that has been quietly replacing all the old fashioned connectors like serial, parallel and PS/2 keyboard ports.

Printers, keyboards, mouse and cameras are just a few of the peripherals that use USB. So there you have it, that’s USB.

There are two versions of USB. The USB 1.0/1.1 was pretty slow (12 megabits per second) and has been upgraded to USB 2.0 (480 megabits per second), faster than Firewire (400 megabits per second).

Most, but not all, USB 2.0 devices will connect to a USB 1.0/1.1 port, but will then run at the latter speed; slow.

Most USB 1.0/1.1 devices will plug into a USB 2.0 port, but they’ll run slow too. The good news is that they will work, but slowly.

So, for full speed you need a USB 2.0 device in a USB 2.0 port.

Firewire was invented by Apple back in 1986 and became an industry-wide standard. Sony has a different name for it - iLink - but it is exactly the same thing.

Now although USB 2.0 seems to be a lot faster than Firewire (480 megabits per second vs 400 megabits per second), it is only burst speed; the rate at which data can be transferred for a short period of time. Burst speed are generally higher than sustained speeds. Firewire on the other has transfer rates at sustained speed; the rate at which data can be transferred continuously. This is due to the difference in the chip design. This is also why Firewire is preferred when it comes to high speed peripherals like camcorders, digital cameras or hard disks.

FireWire is the more established protocol, it has been around longer so there are both more devices available which use it and more sources of information and support. It is easy to set up and use, and it has a very good history of trouble free use. Unlike USB 2.0, FireWire devices can be chained together, allowing well over 100 to run from a single FireWire connection, USB 2.0 on the other hand still uses the old master/slave methodology, meaning they cannot be chained together - therefore you need a USB hub if you wish to have extra devices.

If you don’t have a Firewire port already on your desktop or laptop, a simple upgrade in the form of a PCI or PCMCIA card is required. Firewire cables have two kinds of connectors, large and small, so make sure you get the right connector for your device.

In 2003, Apple introduced Firewire 800; which allows transfer rates up to 800 megabits per second and is backwards compatible with the slower rates and old connections of the old Firewire, which has been renamed to Firewire 400 (so typical of Apple to keep things simple).