What is the difference between USB 1.1 and USB 2.0?
Speed. USB 2.0 has a data transfer rate of 480Mbps (or 60MB/sec) compared to USB 1.1 with a transfer rate of 12Mbps (or 1.5MB/sec) – this is 40 times faster! To take advantage of the faster speed of USB 2.0 you will need USB 2.0 ports in your PC. If you have bought your computer brand new since June 2003 then it is very likely that you have USB 2.0 ports. Otherwise you will probably have USB 1.1 or USB 1.0 ports. You can tell by looking at the Device Manager under Hardware in the System Control Panel – under the Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller there will be a USB 2.0 Root Hub. This isn’t a major problem because virtually all USB 2.0 devices are backward compatible so they will work with USB 1.0 or 1.1 computer ports but will only work at the slower rate. Should you upgrade at a later date to USB 2.0 you will obviously benefit from the faster transfer speed (which means less frustration while waiting for computers to do what you want them to do!
