A majority of laptops come with USB 2.0 ports, but that will change as its successor, USB 3.0, begins to take hold. HP has said it will bring USB 3.0 to a majority of its high-performance and business laptops later this year.
USB ports connect host devices, such as PCs, to other devices such as printers and storage drives. USB 3.0 increases bandwidth and transfers data close to 10 times faster than USB 2.0, according to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), an organization defining USB standards.
The USB 3.0 interface can offer a transfer rate of 5G bps (bits per second) compared to 480M bps per second for USB 2.0. For example, 1G byte of data can be transferred to a host device in 3.3 seconds with USB 3.0, compared to 33 seconds with USB 2.0.
Transfer rates of drives will increase as technology surrounding USB 3.0 develops. Over the last few months, storage devices like external hard drives and SSDs (solid-state drives) with varying data transfer rates have appeared on shelves from companies like OCZ, SuperTalent and LaCie.
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