what is the difference between a usb adapter and a dongle please?

Answer 1

Your being very sketchy with details.

A Dongle is a USB stick that can communicate wirelessly with a bluetooth or wireless device or network.

A USB adapter can be construed as a wired connection or a wireless one and in either case, not nessecarily for communication between devices but as a converstion to a card reader or firewire port.

Answer 2

Dongles originally referred to security devices but the term also includes other items.(read on) Typically anything which plugs into the back of a PC with a short lenght of cable (12 inch or less) and has circuitry and/or connectors may be called a dongle.

A good example is a dongle for an ATI "All in Wonder" video card which provides more connector styles and functions than what could fit on the small PCI card. The short cable from a dongle also allows the bulky components and connectors to be located away from the PC socket and not interfere with plugging in other devices

Originally a dongle was a small device which contains licensing information that plugged into the back of the computer. These were small circuit boards which connected to a computers parallel or serial port with a small lenght of cable. Once plugged in these circuit boards would hang or dangle from the back of you computer ....

Some dongles provided a pass through connector so a printer or serial device could be attached through the dongle. This allowed the dongle to be plugged into the PC with out loosing a PORT and minimized the need to repeatedly attach or remove it from the PC to use other devices.

As security dongles were made smaller they eventually lost the short cable section. A parallel or serial plug , pass through socket and circuit board were placed entirely into a small housing.
Eventually security dongles were developed for use with USB ports and resemble a flash memory in size and appearance.


USB ADAPTERS:
As manufacturers started to remove Serial and Parallel ports from their production designs in favor of USB ports, many users still had legacy hardware which required either a serial or parallel port.

Dongles have been designed to provide an easy way to give these newer USB only designs a serial or paralle port. In addition other adapters are also available such as USB to Ethernet, USB to Firewire ect.

Answer 3

I don't think we need any more answers here, Cabron's answer (above) hit the nail on the head.

For those that don't know or remember them, dongles are a barbaric security system, a flawed remnent from the 80's and 90's. There were/are an alternative to todays serial numbers and involved plugging a whacking great adapter into your RS232 serial port. Using Signlab and AutoCad? Then plug two in. Got plug-ins for your packages? Yes, you guessed it, more of these sprout out the back of your 286 / 386 ....

They were useless at the time and are even more pointless in this day and age when a crack is a mouse click away. O-o

In comparison USB adapters are just devices. Most people think of memory sticks but they actually run from wireless network adapters to foot massages to teacup warmers to poledancing usb toys (I did you not!).

Note: I personally disagree with anyone that thinks 'usb' dongle' is synonymous with 'usb device'

The fact that some companies are using usb interfaces instead of serial ports in no way affects my opinion that they are barbaric throwbacks to the dawn of computing!

Answer 4

A dongle contains licensing/security information for a particular program, the program will not run unless it sees a dongle attached to the computer. A USB adapter is just that, an adapter for a USB device to plug in to.

Answer 5

hi, the question needs some clarification, but generally speaking

They are often mistakenly called the same thing.
usb adapter can be many types; mouse, keyboard, cable, converter from one type of usb to another,network etc.

dongles are from legacy computer days where there was a special adapter that was used for printing, security, network adapters etc.

The real question is what are you trying to do (example, connect to a network, get on the internet, install a device?)

that will better help determine what type of adapter you need

Answer 6

A Dongle is a devise that stores information. You can download files, pictures, etc from your computer onto it and take it to another computer and load it. Dongles are small, about the size of a cigarette lighter, so it can just slip in your pocket and take it with you, rather than dragging your computer around. A USB is a type of "plug in". It is an oblong plug in, on the back of your computer, on your digital camera, etc. It is compatible with outside devises for ease of use. My mouse and keyboard on my computer plug into a USB, as to where some have the round or square type plugs.

Answer 7

usb adaptor female is the one you can install either at the rear of your computer or on the front as in you can download on to your mobile phone,or mp3/4 players
dongle- is what you have with a graphic card IE when you have a new card fitted a dongle comes with that check on wikipedia this will explain all you need to know