It is important to have the ability to expand your laptop. Additional connections and ports give the laptop this capability. The most common types of connection and expansion slots are USB and PCMCIA. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and comes standard on almost all laptops on the market. A USB connection will accept anything from an external hard drive, to a mouse. USB is also expandable by purchasing a USB HUB that will turn one connection into several. USB is very useful for a variety of applications.

USB offers two different standards, 1.1 and 2.0. The 1.1 standard is the original USB standard and is able to transfer data at 12 Mbps, or 1.5 megabytes per second. Most laptops use this standard. Newer laptops come equipped with the newer USB 2.0 standard offering a data transfer speed of 480 Mbps or 60 megabytes per second.

PCMCIA is a laptop exclusive connection that allows several different devices to interact with the machine. Many vendors offer wireless network cards that plug quickly into the PCMCIA slot, without having to open up the case of the laptop. It is highly recommended that all laptops purchased come equipped with a PCMCIA slot.