Maximum number of USB ports?
 

Right now I'm having trouble on my RAM, I'm still using ACER travelmate 260, and it's hard to find cheap SDRAM these days. because of that I'm thinking on using flashdisk as virtual memory, but I'm a bit concern how many USB ports a computer can handle.

My laptop only has 2 USB 1.1 ports and 2 USB 2.0 ports (via PCMCIA), I have plan to buy usb ports extension which virtually makes me have 5 USB 2.0 Ports and 2 USB 1.1 (7 totals). Is this safe for my computer? I heard that it is not recommended to add more than 6 ports in USB, so I'm really wondering if someone could confirm me about this.

It should be fine; the only worry I can think of is the devices being underpowered. I imagine power would not become an issue unless you were using all of the USB ports simultaneously--it shouldn't be a problem unless you need to plug in twelve cameras, three scanners and eight printers.

Actually, I'm only using one USB 1.1 port to power the PCMCIA, and using the two USB 2.o ports for external HDD, printer and DVD-RW. Of course I dont use it simultaneously all the time, I only plug the HDD and DVD-RW when I need to burn though, is it still considered safe? Perhaps there will be times when I will use three ports in same time (for hardisk, dvd-rw, and usb flashdisk).

As stated it should be a problem. The amount of USB devices allowed on a single port are limited by two factors: power and bandwidth. Devices use a different amount of power and bandwidth depending on what they are. In the case of power, if the hub itself is powered(you have to plug it into a wall outlet) then you can ignore this factor. Windows XP will let you know if you exceed either of these factors as you plug in devices. Either way, it is impossible to damage your computer by plugging in too many USB devices. Some of the USB devices will simply refuse to work if you exceed your system capacity.

The only way that I can see you having a problem is if your external hard drive is one of those cute 2.5" ones that can run entirely from USB power. Those use a fairly large slice of the 2.5 watts that USB is rated to supply. Even then, I don't think you'd have trouble...i's pretty hard to overload USB unless you try pretty hard. I suppose that if you hooked up a couple of those nifty LiDE scanners and a few 2.5" hard drives up to one unpowered USB hub, you might have trouble, but that's not something that most people do, is it? :eye:

There are also externally-powered USB 2.0 hubs* out there. Use 'em to improve your expand** your USB experience*** up to 127**** devices.