Quick curiousity/historical question.

[Nev.]

Only seeking a very brief answer to this question.
I do not have a great amount of computer knowledge.

I bought a new printer earlier this year and it connects to my
computer via a USB port. My previous printer connected
via a different port, perhaps parallel?

I seem to have a very vague memory that printers once
connected to computers by either a serial or a parellel cable,
but the parallel was considered the better to buy.

Therefore today, if everything else is equal, it would probably
be a better choice to transfer the data from a device to my computer
with the newer OS "WinXP" using the newer USB cable.

TIA,

Nev.

 

[DandyDon]

Yes, you are correct. USB 2.0 allows a transfer rate of 480 MB/s, which
blows parallel and serial rates away.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I bought a new printer earlier this year and it connects to my
computer via a USB port. My previous printer connected
via a different port, perhaps parallel?

Pretty surely, yes.

I seem to have a very vague memory that printers once
connected to computers by either a serial or a parellel cable,
but the parallel was considered the better to buy.

Parallel ports are much faster then serial ports.

Therefore today, if everything else is equal, it would probably
be a better choice to transfer the data from a device to my computer
with the newer OS "WinXP" using the newer USB cable.

USB is *much, much* faster than the parallel port. I expect that
sometime in the future computers will have no serial or parallel
ports, only USB or maybe Firewire.