jay said:
just got logiteh MX500 , should i us it as ps2 or usb in XP, what's
gonna give me the smoothest, responsive deal here, should I install
the logitech drivers or use XP's
ideas's plz
If your host has both USB and PS/2 and your keyboard and/or mouse
support USB and PS/2, I say to put them on the PS/2 port. No point in
wasting USB bandwidth with critical input devices and just let the PS/2
ports go to waste. You won't get any better performance from these
devices on USB; the device dictates its maximum speed (up to the limit
of the bus), and you get no bang for the buck sticking the keyboard and
mouse on USB. If you deluge your USB with printer traffic, you will
notice delays, slowdown, and jerkiness in keyboard and mouse behavior.
Also, you need to check your system's BIOS. If already supports PS/2
devices but it may not natively support USB keyboards and USB mice.
That means if you need to go into your BIOS that you will still need to
use a keyboard attached to a PS/2 port to make any changes in your BIOS.
And if the BIOS doesn't provide the driver support for these USB
devices, you won't be able to use them in DOS. Whether you rely on
USB-only mode for keyboards and mice really depends if your BIOS
provides the emulation for these devices that would otherwise be handled
okay for PS/2 equivalents. Say you want to flash your system's BIOS
which requires you boot to DOS to run its flash.exe program. Okay, now
you've booted to DOS but cannot enter any commands because your BIOS
doesn't have native support for USB keyboards. Your keyboard is dead
after booting into DOS so you cannot run the flash program to update
your BIOS. You might have to boot into Recovery Console mode in Windows
2000 but none of Windows drivers gets loaded that support the USB
keyboard so your keyboard is dead and you can't do anything you intended
in Recovery Console mode. Make sure your BIOS itself and alone will
support USB keyboards and mice so you're sure you can always use them;
otherwise, you'll be switching them back and forth between the USB and
PS/2 ports, so you might've as well as left them on the PS/2 port.
If you have high-powered USB devices, you won't be able to plug them
into the root hub on the system board (i.e., the USB port in the back of
the case) because they may consume so much current as to render all
devices, even the low powered ones, inoperable or flaky, and likewise
you will have to gauge how many low-powered USB devices you put on a
passive hub attached to the system's USB ports since all the juice is
still provided by the system (so you'll probably need to use powered USB
hubs). Spread out the load.
If you have PS/2 ports, put your keyboard and mice on those. If you
have a USB-only host (i.e., no PS/2 ports) then presumably its BIOS
provides emulation to support the keyboard and mouse so they are usable
when going into your BIOS screens or when loading DOS. There's no point
in throwing away a bus just because another one is glitzier, especially
if you don't get any benefits in using the glitzy newer bus.
