Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Recommendations for small, 4-port USB hub?

<< < (3/4) > >>

Tinman57:
  I just bought a Belkin 4 port USB 2.0 to replace my old Belkin USB 1.0, which I have used for more than 10 years without a problem.  The Belkin USB ports are Vista compatible, and has built in drivers even on my old XP machine.  I've been buying Belkin products for over 20 years now and have never had a failure, so I guess you know who I recommend.   :)

  Another interesting thing I noticed is Belkin uses some kind of technology (don't remember the name) that allows you to get faster throughput even with the older USB 1.0.  Something about it allocating separate channels for each port, or something like that.   ;D

tymrwt33:
I have a Linksys 4 port hub that has a provision for its own power supply. I did not buy the power supply since the hub is for my laptop only, and I only plug in memory sticks into it. Had it three years, no problem.

J-Mac:
From my experience, any of the major brands seem to work equally well. I tend to buy Belkin, more out of habit than for any solid technical reasons. I'd recommend getting one with an AC adaptor, or purchasing one to go along with it. I quickly discovered you'll need it more often than not.

I use this puppy:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817394008
 (see attachment in previous post)
I bought it primarily for the two vertical plugs, since I do a lot of things with my collection of flash memory keys.

The only complaint I have with it is that it is very light. If you have some quality cables plugged in and hanging off the back of your desk, it tends to be dragged around. A hunk of masking tape solved the problem.

Nowadays, I have a 4-port PCI card and 4 more USB connectors on my mobo, so anything that tends to stay plugged in gets one of those ports. I also keep a multi-plug USB cable permanently attached to one of the ports on the mobo for anything that doesn't like to be on a hub.

If I were buying a new hub today, I'd probably go with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817394030

What I'd really like would be for someone to do this idea up as a 4-port USB + 2-port Firewire version; and include a multiple memory card reader socket. That would be too cool.


-40hz (December 15, 2008, 09:42 AM)
--- End quote ---

Be careful with these.

I had two of them and both failed, one taking out the USB port in which it was connected. If you check the Amazon.com ratings for it you'll see that many have had a heat problem with them. The two top ports are particularly vulnerable to the heat issue. For several months I had problems with the USB ports on my desktop PC. Since that PC has given me fits in a lot of areas I thought it was just another manifestation of my crappily built Mach V. Then I discovered just how hot these hubs could get - enough to literally burn my hand while picking it up!

Apparently the problems don’t affect all systems, but they do affect enough that Belkin established a hotline for them and eventually released a "revised" version that supposedly fixed the heat issue. But I've seen reports of the same problems with the newer ones also.

Jim

J-Mac:
By the way, I replaced both Belkins (after getting warranty replacements from Belkin) with two of these Kensington 7-port hubs. These have been great, though I now see that the same kind of "delayed reaction" issues seem to be arising.   :o

THe Belkin got fantastic reviews for about six months, then the heat problems started "attacking". THe Kensington hubs also had great reviews but I just noticed when getting the link for this post that the reviews are all of a sudden reporting problems after about six or seven months of use. I have used two of these for about a year now - actually a bit more than a year - without a problem. But it looks like I need to keep a close eye on them now.

Damn, is this a problem that strikes all multi-port, powered USB hubs? Is it possible that having that many ports on a hub just can't be done without eventually failing?

Thanks!

Jim

nebojsaf:
I recommend APACER PH150:
http://emea.apacer.com/en/images/product/454.jpg

I have two of them and works with now problem with low price. It's 4-port device.
Innovative rotating USB port design, Plug-and-play, High-speed data transfer USB2, Over-current detection and protection
more info here:
http://emea.apacer.com/en/products/PH150.htm

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page