Bewildering Buses

I move large PowerPoint files between my laptop, my work desktop, and my home PC. I'm confused by the transfer speeds of various connectors. Which data buses move large files quickest?

Henry Austin, Cambridge, Massachusetts

There are so many different connectors to choose from that figuring out the best one for a specific application can be a challenge. For starters, some transfer rates are commonly measured in megabytes per second (MBps), and others are measured in megabits per second (mbps); 1 megabyte equals 8 megabits.

Even worse, some of these technologies have more than one name. FireWire is also known as IEEE 1394, Wi-Fi is often referred to as 802.11b, and you could fill a small phone book with all the different names for EIDE and SCSI connectors.

FIGURE 1 lists the theoretical maximum speed at which common connections move data into and out of your PC. Of course, real-world data transfer rates are always slower than these maximums.

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