The Biffer

Quick one for you.

Need to help order a new PC for the Mother in Law, she needs it for work (home office). They have given her a list of specs, which mostly include new enough things (2.8Mhz P4, 512MB RAM etc).

However on this list, they also have a Parallell Port. So three questions :

1) Why on earth would they state this is required?
2) Are they even included on new PC's? (specifically a Dell 4600)
3) If not included, and she has to have it, is it possible to add one on a card?

Merlin

1) Probably for a printer.
2) Built on the motherboard of most PCs
3) Yes, they do have add on cards. Not too expensive, but not in too much demand so you might have to look.















Just took a quick look at the 4600 and saw this...

So you won't have a problem with that computer

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DarkFury

Yeah... many of us still use "old fashioned" parallel port printers... Geez... go figure.

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mcs328

Hmm...I think parallel port printers also have USB as an option. So if she goes to look for a new printer then her new computer should be compatible.

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DarkFury

But what if she wants to keep her old "trusty" printer... or "all in one" machine that is parallel only?

Besides.. most new computers still have a parallel port on them. It hasn't gone "bye bye" like some of the serial ports have.... yet.

The Biffer

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I thought I'd be all set because I have a 4600 myself, only bought it a few months back, and it has all the legacy ports I need, along with the 8 USB 2.0 ports. The back of that thing is hysterical actually, there is so much on there that they have color coded it all for people who are unfamiliar with computers.

I just had this vision of ordering a machine for her and finding that they had stripped out all the legacy stuff, and she was left with a machine that had 12 USB's and 5 firewires, and nothing else. Not that she would know the difference, she'd probably just keep whacking at it with cables until they stuck somewhere, and then would call me demanding to know why her computer was fooked.

bachviet

Most new computers come with parallel port, which I disable.

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Maarchk

I wonder how long parralel will be around.. It seems pretty univesal to have one port like that. Then again, macs have already moved on. All fire wire, and usb.... Those crazy macs.... No wonder they will be #3 in the desktop battles come 2006.

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DarkFury

It will probably be around as long as the floppy drive is still around...

Yeah, they fight to get rid of them... but yet they persist.

Merlin

Of course they persist. They cost nothing to keep so why not? If you don't use it fine but otherwise what the hell?

And no, I don't use mine.

attgig

that was actually a standard that the computer industry instituted a few years back. Hence, all of the new speaker cables have green on them. all your keyboards are that purple & green color. etc etc etc.

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Merlin

And the color coding really helps. My computer is tucked away on the side of my desk and the lighting ain't so good. So when I have to crawl around to get behind it anything that helps me identify what is where is welcomed.

Maarchk

Hehe now its a standard. It used to be a competition and dell vs hp had the coloring reversed. I remember replacing a dell keyboard with one from gateway or somewhere and thinking that i had placed the wrong port on my the keyboard. So i switched them so the colors matched and nothing worked. And i am like, wow i think they build non compatible parts.. How lame... Then i realized the keyboard was going into the wrong slot and it worked. Then i thought.. wow how lame am i ? thinking that companies would use a generic color scheme...