I remember in 1997 or 1998 and perhaps even 1996 most of us had (USB 1.0?) ports in our PCs for months or perhaps years already. Sometimes just pin headers on motherboards rather than actual ports and these rarely worked when actual devices came up.
Back then everybody was hungry for actual peripherals. This was time period when pretty much any new USB product even a shitty mouse was eagerly welcomed and thoroughly reviewed by press.
It wasn't until when Bill Gates famously crashed his PC by connecting a scanner during Windows 98 demo when things started moving. Perhaps that was when USB standard moved to 1.1. Devices were still rare, appearing mostly on trade shows rather than in stores, but at least they worked when you finally later got them.
I remember upgrading to a USB keyboard in early 1999. It was vastly inferior to the PS/2 one I used before in every possible way and I still had to keep a PS/2 just in case I wanted to do something in the BIOS setup, but it was finally USB!