My son has been told that he must get a data pen (min. 32 meg)for college. I looked through a computer mag and the only one they had in it appears to plug into your pc’s USB port. I have my broadband modem plugged into the USB port and wonder if it will be ok to unplug it as and when he needs to use the data pen?
Are you sure that your PC only has one USB port? - even for a notebook, this would be quite unusual.
You can get USB hubs (powered and unpowered) that just plug into the socket and have a trailing box with (usually) four USB ports in it - it isn’t usually recommended that you plug your broadband through a hub, but:
-I think this is only really an issue if there are a lot of other peripherals on the same port that are bandwidth -intensive
-I’ve got my broadband plugged into a hub (no choice) and it doesn’t make any difference to me, but I’m only on 500K broadband, so the bottleneck is quite likely not in the USB side of things.
Sorry, I meant to add… if you’re currently using a USB port at the back of the PC for your broadband, have a look on the front panel of the PC case; is there a little door that flips down anywhere? (particularly at the bottom centre) - if so, you might find another USB port behind it.
There is a lead coming out of the front of the PC that wasn’t there before the broadband guy called. I’m assuming this is the broadband modem lead plugged into the USB port? There is another port (unused) next to it but it looks bigger to me, more like a seriel port? Should there be another broadband port around the back of the PC?
Forgive my ignorance!
Are you quite sure that you have properly identified a USB port? It should look like a narrow slot, with 4 silvery contacts visible. There should be at least two of these on the back, and my front panel has another pair.
USB is attractive because it can be unplugged and reattached with little to no harm. Unplugging the modem would be inconvenient, but hardly impractical. What I am wondering is why you have a cable modem attached through USB? Unless it is the faster second generation USB, it would be quite slow. Usually the Ethernet port is used for such data transfer, as it is good for little else.
legion, can you post the make and model of your notebook, i.e. Dell Inspiron, Sony Vaio? We could probably find out from the manufacturer what exactly it is you have and where for USB ports.
USB broadband modems are not uncommon. Though I don’t have one myself, it does plug into an external Ethernet USB adapter. I suspect that USB broadband modems have the Ethernet adapter built-in and it this that plugs into the USB port on your computer, more or less matching the setup that I have.
Horseflesh:
I have an E Machines 1.0 Ghz Celeron desktop. I bought it from PC World a couple of years ago. I think E Machines is PC Worlds own badge?
I’m pretty sure my cable modem is hooked up to the USB port. When I look under Start/Settings/Network Connections, the only connection that isn’t for my old 56k modem is for something called USB Cable Modem 351000.