One area that may prove to be of interest to application developers is support for the Universal Serial Bus (USB). This is a new standard designed to replace the present device dependence on a limited number of hardware interrupts. Existing systems have seen ever-increasing competition by peripherals— modems, mice, sound cards, and the like—for the limited resources represented by the 16 available hardware interrupts (a number of which were already reserved for the central system itself). The USB is designed to offer a virtually unlimited number of connections for existing and newer devices, while providing effective throughput speeds orders of magnitude higher than the speeds of existing channels.
Windows 98 claims to be USB-compatible (or USB claims to be Windows-compatible). At the time this book is being written, however, the USB standard is still too new to have exhibited any kind of track record, so whether this standard will be the universal panacea or not remains an open question. It is difficult to forecast or even imagine how the USB is going to affect application development. For now, you can consider the USB as an area worth watching.
In addition to the USB peripherals, Windows 98 includes support for AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) video cards, MMX processors, and the still controversial DVD drive. Furthermore, you will also be able to connect multiple displays (multiple monitors using multiple display cards). Likewise, the new Multilink Channel Aggregation (MCA) technology allows you to boost bandwidth by combining two or more communication lines (although few ISPs currently permit the multiple logons necessary to support MCA connections).