If you just want a blueprint for the ultimate machine, and want to build-to-print, then 30 minutes ago is obsolete by now. These are a continuing series of articles, and frequently cross-reference each other. Some of the "designs" evolve over several months. Each of these "designs" shows where you have to trade off things to get cheapest, fastest, most versatile, or some adaptation to special purposes. One of the most useful features of the articles is that they give sources, and often suggest alternate parts and/or sources.
There haven't been a lot of "new concepts" in the past couple of years either; so unless you're looking for some new gizmo to build a machine around, 2003 is not particular different than yesterday.
and also for SRS:
Not too long ago four USB jacks was the norm on new commercial models, but the 4 jacks on cheaper machines sometimes only represent two ports. You could use the two on the front, or use the two on the back, but you really only had two at a time. If you used one on the back, you had to be careful about using the right one of the two on the front for another plugin. Better machines, of course, had true internal hubs so number of jacks was same as number of ports. I suspect that most current models will be properly equipped so that each jack is connected to a separate hub port, although you might still run into the "cheap" setup with a bottom of the barrel machine.
As with etherlink hubs, there are two kinds. The "passive hub" is a little cheaper, but a "switching hub" is a little more efficient, and will usually give a little faster data transfer. The passive hub just provides a sort of an "impedance match" and signals from the computer are sent to all of the connected USB devices. In theory only the one the computer wants to talk to will respond. The switching type keeps track of the peripherals, and only sends to the device the computer's transmission is meant for - sort of.
And just for SRS:
You should have an icon in the System Tray at the bottom right of your desktop that looks like a sort of rectangular object with a fat green arrow above it. If you hover over it, the ident tag that pops up should say "Safely Remove Hardware" (WinXP), or "Unplug or Eject Hardware" (Win2K). If you double-click it, and click on the device you intend to "remove" before you unplug something, your machine will do a new recognition when you plug something else in, or when you plug the same device back in - regardless of which port you use. You should ALWAYS use this utility before you unplug something - especially that external Hard Drive.
If you unplug something without doing the "safe remove" step, the same device may work if you plug back into the same port, or it may not. It's unlikely to work if you plug it into another port, since the "same device" can't be connected to two different ports. By disconnecting without "dismounting" one device, you can confuse the whole USB hub system. The only good cure for that is to reboot and let the machine run the PnP routine to "find" what's connected.
Re the camera cable: I tried to buy a "spare" cable so I could leave one connected to the main machine and still have one to offload pictures when I'm out and about with the laptop. No luck, because the camera maker (Fujitsu) wouldn't supply replacements and no other camera used the same "proprietary" jack. I "solved" the problem by getting a couple of $10 - $15 dollar "card readers." You do have to remove the memory card from the camera and insert it into the reader, but many people do that routinely anyway. (Quite a few "photo inkjet" printers have card plugin receptacles so that you can print directly from the card. A few new computers have slots for common cards on the front panel.) Actually, I've never used the readers except to check that they work; but it's an option.
Now I find that a lot of new cameras use that connector, but there are no new ones that would allow me to use the memory cards from my old one. I think it's called "marketing" - subcategory "planned obsolescence."