Peripherals and Ports

Let's take a look at the back of our computer again. Here you see lots of connectors or ports we can plug in different objects, like a mouse, keyboard, and a monitor. These are known as peripherals. A peripheral is basically anything that you connect your computer externally that adds functionality. You've probably used USB devices before. USB, also known as universal serial bus devices, are the most popular connections for our gadgets. USB has gone through lots of changes since inception. Your most commonly encounter USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and 3.1 in today's system. In the chart let's pay attention to the details using Mb/s instead of using MB to reference transfer speed, these are actually different units. MB is megabyte or unit of data storage while capital Mb/s is a megabit per second, which is a unit of data transfer rate. People often mistake speeds of 40 megabit a second to mean that you can transfer 40 megabytes of data per second. Remember that one byte is eight bits, so to transfer a one megabyte file in a second, you need an eight megabits per second connection speed. You will also need compatible USB ports to go with your devices. If you connect a USB 2.0 device into a USB 3.0 port, you won't get 3.0 transfer speed but you can still use the port since it's backward compatible, meaning older hardware will work with newer hardware. The ports are easy to differentiate, let me show you. In general, USB 2.0 are black and USB 3.0 are blue and 3.1 ports are teal. This may change depending on manufacturers. There are lots of types of USB connectors and you can read about all of them in the supplemental reading right after this video, check it out. Back to USB connectors. The most recent one is a Type C connector, which is meant to replace many peripheral connections. It's quickly becoming a universal standard for display and data transfer. In addition to USB peripherals, you should also be aware of display peripherals. There are some common impulse standards to know. Most computer monitors will have one or more of these connections, but you might encounter some older standards too, DVI. DVI cables are generally just output video, if you need to hook up a monitor or projector for a slide presentation, and you want audio too, you may be out of luck, instead, you want to look at one of the following cables, HDMI. This has become a standard in lots of televisions and computers nowadays, and outputs both video and audio. Another standard that's become popular among manufacturers is a display port, which also outputs audio and video. In addition to audio and video, USB Type C can also do data transfer and power. As an IT support specialist, you'll work with peripherals like USB devices and display devices a lot. Now, you'll be able to distinguish between the major types.
(Required)
en
​