What is the purpose of USB mice/keyboards? (1 Viewer)

[Dave Poehlman]

I mean, is it any less difficult to plug in a USB mouse than a PS2? I don't understand the advantage of one over the other? Can someone explain this?

 

[KyleS]

Convenience. USB is a hot swappable device so you can plug it in after the system is on and it will work fine. Makes a huge difference for a lot of laptop users. Other then that there really isnt any "Advantage" to speak of.

KyleS

 

[Shayne Lebrun]

Consolidation. Makes sense to have a 'universal' bus, instead of Keyboard, Serial, PS/2, ADB, whatever Sun called it's old keyboard/mouse bus, and so on.

Makes it much more likely you can buy a piece of hardware, plug it in, and go.

 

[DonRoeber]

The USB bus is also faster than the PS2 bus, so you get a higher sampling rate on USB mice. Some 3d Gamers say this makes a difference in the responsiveness of the mouse.

 

[Graeme Clark]

What Don said. I remember there was a big hoopla over this when USB mice were first being released.

I haven't noticed any different.

I use a USB mouse cause I have two mice plugged into my system.

 

[Robert_Gaither]

You can also buy an USB hub and plug everything to for convience and relocate the computer elsewhere instead of having to use extension cords for each device. There are also people who use the serial bus to connect to other devices (routers, other computers, joysticks, etc) and end up using the USB port for the mouse. Personally I think the convience of it being on the front of some computers allow people to also get varied type of furniture instead of being based on the cord length of the mouse.

 

[Dave Gorman]

I use a USB mouse cause I have two mice plugged into my system

Sorry to be dumb, but why do you need 2 mice?

 

[Dustin B]

Noticing the mouse speed depends on your frame rate. If your frame rate is significantly higher than your mouse sample rate you'll notice when the mouse sample rate is increased. Although with the PS2 rate programs out there this is really a moot point.

The bigger one with keyboards would be how many keys can be pressed at the same time. I hated the old 5pin keyboards. Playing games I'd always be pressing more than 3 keys at the same time. With the 5 pin if you are holding 3 keys, the 4th key you press does nothing.

With PS2 this goes up to 5 (I've never managed to hang up a PS2 keyboard pressing too many keys, but my roommate complains about it). And I don't know if there even is a limit with the USB keyboards.

But I do think the biggest reason is what Shayne and Robert said.

 

[Graeme Clark]

Sorry to be dumb, but why do you need 2 mice?

Not dumb, and I knew someone was going to ask.

I have a Logitech Wireless mouse and KB, which I couldn't live withouth (the mouse at least). There seems to be some sort of problem with the two when I have both a mouse button and a few keys pressed and my mouse button will get "stuck". In Win98 I was able to fix this with some driver switching, but it doesn't work in XP.

It usually only happens in FPS shooter games where my character will keep shooting or running, so I plugged in my old corded mouse and switch over when I play those games (I wish my old wheeless one worked) and continue to use the wireless for everything else.

 

[Larry Seno Jr.]

I have two mice as well. One is a trackball and one is a mouse.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

A USB mouse vs a PS2 mouse in a first person shooter game is night and day.

I could never go back to the jerkyness of a PS2 mouse.

The other reason is that PS2 connections and all legacy devices are going out the door, at least they have been trying. There are no needs for such old architecture now.

 

[Bill Slack]

Mainly to get it down to one interface. It eliminates the need for seperate serial/keyb/mouse ports.

I believe the default (in windows) sampling for PS/2 mouse is 40hz vs 125hz for USB. You can change the sampling rate to higher, however. I find a higher sampling rate very noticable.

Having a hot-swappable mouse is much nicer.

 

[David Lawson]

Mac users wonder what the purpose of a parallel port, a serial port, a game port, and a PS2 port is.
USB is the only option we've had for keyboards and mice for a few years now.

 

[Andrew Grall]

My new motherboard, the Abit IT7 no longer has "legacy" ports like the keyboard/mouse PS/2 ports, serial ports, or parallel port. It has a shitload of USB ports (10?) and 4 firewire ports.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

USB is the only option we've had for keyboards and mice for a few years now.

That is the only thing that Apple has done right in my opinion. Still wouldn't buy or use one but they definately took the first step in the right direction.

 

[Robert_Gaither]

I'll have to agree with Jason as when I took an A+ course one of the things we were specifically not taught were Apples since we were pretty much told they were such inferior business machines that it wasn't worth the time to learn them for the test (consider we were tested both for Dos and Unix this told me that apple doesn't have much of a market representation).

 

[David Lawson]

That is the only thing that Apple has done right in my opinion.

Mac OS X, anyone?

 

[KyleS]

That is the only thing that Apple has done right in my opinion

Apple IMO is actually at the forefront of a lot of technologies and for that I have to give them a big thumbs up. (CDR, CDRW, DVD, DVDR/RW, etc) OSX IMO was not a huge thing but just a step forward (finally) in GUI for apple. I especially didnt like how it operated when you installed it over a previous version, they work completely independently of each other instead of upgrading the older version. USB and Firewire are another format that apple has gone to first and is leading the way.

Now after saying that I wouldnt own one anytime in the near future since I am a PC kind of guy but they have my respect for being at the front of a lot of technologies.

KyleS

 

[JJR512]

For the record, OS X is not based on Unix. At least, not directly. It's more accurate to say it's based on BSD...specifically, FreeBSD...which is a variant of Unix, similar to the way Linux is a variant of Unix. Another version of BSD, I believe OpenBSD or NetBSD, is probably the most stable modern OS available. Nobody has found any remote vulnerabilities in it in over four years. For the record, Windows is my favorite OS, but we all know Microsoft can't say that, and neither can Linux.
Oh, and about Mac users wondering what all those other ports are for? Hey, when you figure out that mice should have more than one button, let me know and we'll talk then.

 

[Joseph S]

That is the only thing that Apple has done right in my opinion

-Firewire- bootable and hot-plug/unplug (WinXP still doesn't even have this essential fxn, which really bugs me. :frowning: )
-Netboot
-iPod
-Final Cut Pro
-DVD Studio Pro
-Applescript Studio
-universal plug-n-play networking
-inkwell
-QT 6 Broadcaster
-QTSS