1. What is a USB cable?2. What is a Card Reader?3. What is the differences?4. Which one do I need for my camera to upload pictures onto a computer? or would it be best to have both?
I use a card reader. It's a thing that you put the memory card into and then it has a USB plug on it that you plug into your computer. A USB cable is kinda the same. One end plugs into the camera and one end plugs into the computer. I don't think it matters which one you use. Try reading the papers and stuff that came with your camera.
Cable: It's a way for you to connect your camera directly to your computer via a USB Port on your system and the port on your camera. Reader: It's a small device into which you insert your memory card then plug that into a USB port. Windows will see the reader as a drive so you can copy/paste your photo files into the folder of your choice. No extra software required. The difference is that you don't need any special software to make the reader work - it talks directly to Windows as I wrote above. I use them all the time. I have three digital cameras and all use different styles of cards so I have three different readers. They all work very well. So well in fact I have no photo upload software installed. I, of course, have a viewer program but no upload software - very handy indeed. You can use the software that came with your camera but I see lots of write ups here about problems with it. Fact is I've had those same problems so that's why I went to readers. The readers have never failed to connect to Windows and they make what can be a complicated job very simple. Great news, they're really cheap to boot!
