Universal Serial Bus or USB technology first began to appear in personal computers (PCs) in 1995. Today, nearly every newly manufactured PC has multiple USB ports. USB technology is available for both IBM compatible and Apple Macintosh computers.

USB began a sort of revolution in peripheral device support in PCs. By allowing for up to 127 devices to be connected to a single USB port, peripheral devices no longer need to vie for a connection but instead can share a connection with dissimilar devices. In fact, USB even allows for use of multiple identical devices on the same port as long as each device possesses its own unique device ID.

USB version 1.0 offered increased data transfer rates over legacy interfaces like serial and parallel. Data transfer rates of 1.5 Mbps to 12 Mbps are possible with USB version 1.0. The recently introduced “Hi-Speed USB” made possible in USB version 2.0 increased the speed of data transfer to 480 Mbps. Not all devices using USB and complying with the USB 2.0 standard will use the full bandwidth made available by “Hi-Speed USB”, but is sure is nice to know it’s there if required.

Printing, in particular, benefits greatly from USB connectivity. The increased data transfer rates of USB mean the time required to transfer data to the printer is greatly reduced. And, in many cases, the data transfer rate is so fast it is made to be completely irrelevant.

Star Printers Available with USB Communications

SP500*, TSP600, TSP700, TSP800 and TUP900

*Q1, 2005