scottls2's Full Review: Belkin (F5U507) 4-Port USB/Firewire Hub
I got this USB/Firewire hub to go with my early model Mac Mini and it's just the right size to fit underneath like it was designed to. It is small, light weight, and compliments the Mini quite well. I thought it was a necessary accessory because the early model Mac Mini I have only has 1 Firewire 400 and 2 USB 2.0 ports on the back with none on the front. The 2nd generation Mini added 2 more USB ports which is Ok, but they are still all on the back. Not good if you have a device that you plug in an out quite often. This hub addresses that problem with 1 Firewire 400 and 3 more USB 2.0 ports on the back and 1 of each on the front, for the devices you do plug in and out more frequently. One setback though, is hooking this hub up to the Mini requires you to use the only Firewire port AND one of the USB ports on the Mini, bringing the total up to only 2 Firewire and 5 USB ports available between the two combined. To me that seems like a design flaw because I'm sure they could have made it so that one single USB 2.0 port which works at speeds of up to 480MBPS could convert and accommodate the Firewire ports which is no faster than 400MBPS. I guess that would have also stepped up cost of this hub a tad bit more too though. I also kinda wish it had it's own power adapter to help run some of the unpowered USB devices, because I am sure the 85 Watts of maximum continuous power the Mini's brick puts out will prove to be lacking a little humph sometimes. The hub itself doesn't seem to require hardly any power except to light up the matching led on the front of the unit, which incidentally never shuts off unless you power down AND switch off the power to the Mac Mini. (was that a design flaw?) As far as the performance of this matching hub, I give it a thumbs up, because as far as I can tell, it seems to work as well as any multi port hub should. The USB 2.0 ports seem to work very well, and is backward compatible with slower 1.0 and 1.1 USB speeds. I only have 1 device that requires Firewire connectivity and I've had no problems there as well.
Belkin has designed this hub specifically to stack on top of or below the Mac Mini although its compact form is sure to alleviate space issues on any...More at Newegg.com
Provides four downstream USB ports compatible with both Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 (low- and full-speed) devices. It also features two FireWire port...More at onSale
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