Recommend a USB hub

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think my Staples USB hub is crapping out; I have to keep reinstalling my printer, which is the only thing connected to it, and the indicator lights keep going out. So I’d like to try swapping it out as the likely culprit.

I’ve been surfing around on the usual sites: ThinkGeek, Amazon, Tiger Direct, Newegg, Provantage, Outpost, and reading the reviews, and nothing’s jumping out at me. Any suggestions?

Here are my criteria:

(1) It MUST be AC powered. This hub connects my printer via a 15’ cable from across the room, so I must have the power.

(2) The current 4-port hub is fine, as I don’t have a lot of gadgets. An easily accessible port for my thumb drive would be nice, as the one on the computer is a slight pain to get to.

(3) I don’t need any card readers or other crap on it. I already have a set of card readers that I don’t use (the guy who built my computer threw them in for free).

(4) Because of the configuration, it has to sit on top of my desk, so if possible, it would be cool if it looked, well, :cool: cool, instead of just another gray or black box on my desk. I thought ThinkGeek would have some choices, but none of the cool ones (like the Doctor Who phone box) appear to have AC power. Wall-mountable would also be a plus.

(5) I was kind of interested in this one, but the reviews reveal that the lights don’t indicate activity or connectivity. Mmm, bad. I want to be able to look at it and know what’s working.

(6) USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed), duh.

(7) I tried to stick with brands I’ve at least heard of (Belkin, Kensington), but I’ll consider others if you can tell me from experience that they’re reliable. I already have one cheap hub that’s crapping out, thanks. :slight_smile:

I think that’s it. Any thoughts? Muchas gracias.

2

Simple: get the cheapest one that has the number of ports you need (and is powered).

For my work we were looking into a project of integrating a USB hub into this other product. For research, I went down to Fry’s and grabbed as many different brand hubs I could find. I went home and dissected them to find (despite varying prices, brands, etc.) 4 of the 6 used the exact same USB hub chip (Genesys Logic GL850A, in case you’re interested).
Bottomline: on the inside they’re all pretty much the same.

3

I use a D-Link, with 4 ports and an AC connector. It seems to do the job just fine, and it wasn’t that expensive.

4

OK, so I can expect all of them to crap out after a year and a half as well? :frowning:

ETA: This is a reply to cormac, of course.

5

Probably. The good news is that the prices will have dropped so much by then, you can find a new replacement at the $ .99 store ! (the USB 3.0 hubs will only be $5.00 :wink: