What does USB stand for?

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus.

USB is a replacement for many of the older legacy technologies such as serial and parallel interfaces. USB makes your life easier by not requiring drivers (for the device itself), being widely available and having the ability to draw power. By drawing power directly from your computer you can avoid having to provide an external power source to many USB devices (though some power-hungry devices do still require an external power source because they can't draw enough from the USB port).

Universal Serial Bus is also Plug-n-Play - you can plug your USB devices and they will generall be recognized (and in many cases just start working) without you needing to do anything. If a driver is needed you should have an option to automatically scan the internet for available drivers - this stuff couldn't be any easier.

USB 1.1 and 2.0 are widely available (though by now most products have been upgraded to 2.0), but now a new interface known as USB 3.0 is slowly is making it's way to the market. It will probably be a few years before 3.0 devices are widely available and we anticipate that active extension cables will be widely available when the interface is more common.