My friend has recently purchased a second hand Toshiba Sattalite Notebook (1.6 Celeron M, 256MB RAM, 40GB HD, WinXP, CD-RW). My question is though are the included USB ports 1.1 or 2.0, how does one determin this. I have tried investigating this though the controll panel and system, but the information avalible does not stipulate the sought information.

His intention is to purchase an external DVD-RW which requires USB 2.0 and thus he needs to know weather the included hardware is capable or does he need to purchase a usb/Firewire card.

If you look in device manager and view the last section (called "Universal Serial Bus Controllers", it will give you a list of USB hubs and USB devices on your computer.

If you see "Enhanced PCI to USB" controller somewhere, then you have USB 2.0. The keyword here is "Enchanced". If you do not see this word, then you likely have USB 1.1.