These days, it is a necessity, but at what price.
Written: Apr 09 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Gives aility to run extra USB devices without swapping or opening case
Cons: At $39, it is a little expensive. $15 is a fair price
The Bottom Line: USB hubs are useful, but why pay 3x the price of a generic USB hub for this one?
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| stevelarrison's Full Review: ADS USB Ultra Hub 4 |
The popularity of USB devices is undeniable. USB, or Universal Serial Bus, allows a fast connection in a format that is universally supported.
To truly appreciate USB, you will have had to "grow up" in the age of parallel and serial ports. Getting cables to work for custom applications has always been part of the "fun" of computers. (Do you need a regular parallel printer cable, or a Centronix cable? How about a 9 pin to 25 pin serial cable?)
As a result of the confusion, various computer periphreal manufacturers adopted a standard way to communicate between external devices and PCs. Just about any motherboard made in the past 5 years has at least 2 USB ports built in. USB printers, scanners, cameras, MP3 players, hand held devices like the Handspring Visor, modems, CD-RWs, optical sound connections for home theater integration, and a host of other devices are currently available.
You can probably see where this is going. If you have 2 USB ports on your motherboard, how will you run all the devices? Well, fortunately, the USB spec supports daisy chaining. It is possible to run up to 127 devices off of one USB port. You can take a single USB hub, and turn one of your USB ports on the motherboard into capacity for 4 devices. If this isn't enough, you can plug up to 4 hubs into a single USB hub and support 16 devices by daisy chaining 5 hubs, and still only be utilizing one of the USB ports on your motherboard. (This process can be repeated for up to 127 devices)
While the concept of a USB hub is very useful, I have a hard time recommending this particular USB hub. Instead of paying 39.99 for an ADS USB hub, you should just get a generic hub. All USB hubs preform pretty much alike, and you can get a generic hub for $12 to $15. While there is nothing wrong with this hub, I can see no justification in paying 3 times the price of a generic brand for this USB hub.
Recommended:
No
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stevelarrison
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Member: Steve Larrison
Location: Scottsdale, Az. USA
Reviews written: 171
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Beer, the answer to, and the cause of all life's problems.
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