Chapter 7. Choosing Peripheral Devices

While your Mac is a marvelous tool in and of itself, there are times when you may want to supplement its capabilities with peripheral hardware, such as printers, scanners , digital cameras , and even additional hard drives . Fortunately, recent Macs come equipped with USB and FireWire ports, which make connecting to such things easy. USB and FireWire are two different standards used to convey data between computers and various devices.

If you have an older peripheral device that connects via SCSI instead of USB or FireWire, you can check with your local Apple computer vendor for a SCSI-to-USB adapter or a SCSI-to-FireWire adapter. Such adapters enable you to use older scanners, hard drives, and other devices on your computer. The only downside is with hard drives; they'll run slower on a USB port (the SCSI-to-FireWire adapter is better if your computer has FireWire).