How do I add a USB device to my computer if I am out of ports?

Just about every peripheral made now comes in a USB version.
Here's a list of some of the USB devices that you can buy
today:

* Printers
* Scanners
* Mice
* Joysticks
* Flight yokes
* Digital cameras
* Webcams
* Scientific data acquisition devices
* Modems
* Speakers
* Telephones
* Video phones
* Storage devices like Zip drives
* Network connections

Most computers that you buy today come with only one or two
USB sockets. With so many USB devices on the market today,
you easily run out of sockets very quickly. For example, on
the computer that I am typing on right now, I have a USB
printer, a USB scanner, a USB Webcam and a USB network
connection. My computer has only one USB connector on it, so
the obvious question is, "How do you hook up all the devices?"

The easy solution to the problem is to buy an inexpensive USB
hub. The USB standard supports up to 127 devices, and USB
hubs are a part of the standard.

A hub typically has four new ports, but may have many more.
You plug the hub into your computer, and then plug your
devices (or other hubs) into the hub. By chaining hubs
together, you can build up dozens of available USB ports on
a single computer.

Hubs can be powered or unpowered. The USB standard allows for
devices to draw their power from their USB connection (all
USB cables contain two wires -- for +5 volts and ground).
A high-power device like a printer or scanner will have its
own power supply, but low-power devices like mice and
digital cameras get their power from the bus. The power
(up to 500 milliamps at 5 volts) comes from the computer. 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 connecting 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 do not overload the computer's power supply.

The Universal Serial Bus can easily handle both a scanner and
a printer, even if you are scanning and printing at the same
time. The original USB supports up to 12 megabits per second,
and USB 2.0 supports up to 480 megabits per second --
considering that most devices consume only 6 megabits per
second, you can definitely run more than one device at
a time.