USB devices are something that I have always avoided because they are still pretty non standard in the PC business world, but for a small home business or small company with only a couple of PC's this standard could offer you a cheap way of adding additional devices.

On one PC here we use a USB modem and a USB scanner, simply because they proved to be cheap and do the job that was required of them. One missing thing from them though was any form of pass-through port, that all Apple-Mac devices seem to have! So much for making it easy to chain devices.

Initially, we used the two USB ports on the machine for these devices, then decided to add a digital camera with USB card reader to the system. This meant that we initially had to keep swapping the devices over, and as anyone knows, laziness soon creeps in and you have to take action.. hence the USB HUB had to be purchased.

So, I parted with £25.00 for a nice little 4 port USB HUB, rushed back and opened the box to find one device, a cable and a massive power supply....

Being the way I am, I quickly ignored the instructions written in ChingLish, plugged the cable to the PC, insert the three USB devices into the small HUB without the power adaptor, turned on the computer, and it found the hub and the devices first time and then proceeded to work!

The power adaptor is only really of use if you have devices that are drawing too much power at the same time and this kicks in to compensate for the drain. A nice feature, and at least for the moment, something we don't have to use.

So I would have to say that for the money, this little device represents extremely good value, does what it's supposed to do and can only be recommended if you are becoming short of USB ports like I soon will be again!



Recommended: Yes