Welcome to brain Stuff from House stuffworks dot com where smart happens. This podcast is brought to you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of audio books, with more than one hundred thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature. For brain Stuff listeners, Audible is offering a free audio book to give you a chance to try out their service. One audiobook to consider is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell delves deep into the human psyche to
explore how we make decisions. Are people with high i Qes the best decision makers not necessarily are hastily made decisions the best Find out the fascinating science and psychology behind the human decision making process in Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, available from Audible. To try Audible free today and to get a free audiobook of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com slash brain Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot
com slash brain Stuff. Hi. I'm Marshall brain with today's question, how do you add a USB device to your computer if you've run out of USB ports? A typical desktop machine comes with four USB ports, and laptops can come with as few as too, so it's easy to use them up. Because there are so many USB devices out there mice, keyboards, scanners, printers, thumb drives, external drives, microphone, webcams, and so on, they all need a port, and with so many USB devices on the market today, you can
run out of sockets very quickly. The easy solution to the problem is to buy an inexpensive USB hub. The USB standard supports up to a hundred and twenty seven devices, and hubs are a part of that standard. Hub typically has four new ports, but could have many more. You plug the hub into your computer and then plug your devices or other hubs into the hub. By chaining ubs together, you can build up dozens of available USB ports on
a single computer. Hubs can be powered or unpowered. If you have lots of self powered devices like printers and scanners, then your hub does not need to be powered. None of the devices connected to the hub need additional power, so the computer can handle it. If you have lots of unpowered devices like mice and cameras, you probably need
a powered hub. The hub has its own transformer and it supplies power to the devices that connect to the hub so the devices don't overload the computer's power supply from maximum speed. Make sure that the hub you buy handles USB two point oh one advantage of buying a hub if you buy one that looks good on your desk, is that it makes USB access a lot easier. When you need to plug in a thumb drive, you can do it at desk level rather than down at floor level.
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