Uses for Your Laptop’s USB Port
Your laptop’s USB port can expand its capabilities to include much more than external storage and printers. You can also connect a mouse and keyboard, game controller, speakers, Bluetooth devices, and many other things that you might not expect.
| Device | Unusual Thing It Does |
|---|---|
| Legacy adapter | Allows you to connect ancient (legacy) serial, parallel, joystick, and other devices to your laptop. This adapter saves you from buying a port replicator and allows you to continue to use older hardware with your newer laptop. |
| Mouse and keyboard connector | Lets you connect an external mouse or keyboard, or both, to a laptop lacking a specific mouse or keyboard port (assuming that the mouse and keyboard don’t have USB-specific connections). |
| Numeric keypad | Causes you to forget, when numbers are your game, about using the laptop’s silly numeric-keypad thing. Instead, buy an external numeric keypad and let your fingers fly. |
| Sound hardware | Laptops lack internal expansion options to add high-quality sound hardware, so the next-best thing is to get external sound hardware provided by the USB port. |
| Speakers | Lets you hear sound. To go along with the USB sound expansion, you can get some mini-USB-powered speakers for your laptop. |
| Video camera | Takes care of all your on-the-road videoconferencing needs. |
| Little light | Plugs in and is powered by the USB port. |
| Game controller | Control your little man, pilot your space ship, or wield that sword of magic. Most of the hot new game controllers are USB-based. |
| Laptop cooler | Acts like a fancy pad on which to sit your laptop. It contains a tiny, quiet fan that helps keep your laptop cool, and it runs from the power supplied by the USB port. |
| Mobile phone recharger | Lets you transfer some of the laptop’s power to your mobile phone. |
| Security device | Uses the USB port to power an alarm on a cable lock or plugs in to the USB port and unlocks (or unscrambles) the laptop’s data. |
| Bluetooth communications device | Allows your computer system to chat with other Bluetooth-enabled devices. |