USB Peripherals

i was recently faced with getting either a new desktop or laptop. i ended up with a 2.6 ghz P4 gateway laptop. since there are no ports for a mouse(i hate the damn touchpad) i bought the one that hooks in through the usb plug. i was just wondering what else they make that works with the usb. i'm particularly looking for a joystick now so i can play ATF and all the other janes games. Also is there anything to give you more usb ports without modifying the PC?

i was recently faced with getting either a new desktop or laptop. i ended up with a 2.6 ghz P4 gateway laptop. since there are no ports for a mouse(i hate the damn touchpad) i bought the one that hooks in through the usb plug. i was just wondering what else they make that works with the usb. i'm particularly looking for a joystick now so i can play ATF and all the other janes games. Also is there anything to give you more usb ports without modifying the PC?

USB ports suppose to be able to accomodate ANYTHING (well almost). You can get things such as sound cards, speakers, joysticks, tv tuner cards or radio or both, cd roms, burners, dvd burners/roms, scanners, printers, etc. It goes on, and on top of that, each port can be daisy chained with up to 127 devices (the limitation of the binary system or how the port was constructed with precision basically).

So really its quite flexible, but USB are cpu hogs, so unless you really want to tie it up and run cpu critical applications, I suggest maybe not relying on USB too much.

more ports..you can get a usb hub...most add 4 ports and you plug it into 1 usb port.