Snigs I have a MS FF PP, the reason I suggested the Logitech was because Capt Wannabee preferred USB, and to the best of my knowledge MS FF PP only comes with a D connector. I personally like the MS one (god I hate saying I like MS stuff) seems pretty responsive/solid/well made etc. One word of caution if your gameport is through your soundcard check for compatability issue at the MS site. Someone on here (sorry can't remember whoi) had real problems and although the soundcard was 'sounblaster compatable' it is regarding sound but the chipset caused no end of problems as a game control port.
USB is Universal Serial Bus, it allows you to hot connect/disconnect peripherals without shutting the pc down. It is faster than a standard serial port, although it's been around a few years it has only really taken off in the last 6-12 months, you can now get USB Mice/printers/scanners/joysticks, you can download pics from your digi cam etc etc. USB is only supported in W95(OSR2) W98 and W2K, (and Imac's) earlier versions of W95 and NT don't support USB. How do you know you've got it, look at the back of your pc where all the connectors go and if you have it you will see either 1 or 2 oblong shaped holes not too didimilar to a phone socket. You can also have look in device manager and at the bottom will be an icon looks like a 3 pronged fork with usb control bus by it. It needs to be activated in your BIOS before it will work in windows. I think that's about it, hope that helps, just to confuse things even more USB 2.0 is just around the corner, supposed to be faster and backwards compatible.