Customer Reviews

Belkin Economy USB 1.1 7-Port Hub (F5U027)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I use USB a lot - I have a variety of devices that use it to communicae with computers, and the couple of sockets that most machines have has long since become inadequate for what I do. At present, I have two Belkin 7-port USB hubs and one 4-port model on various computers around my house and business. They are simple, unassuming, and loyally perform their work with a minimum of trouble. I've tried other hubs, but the Belkins have been by far the most reliable.

This is a plug it in then plug other things into it technology. The only thing you can do wrong is man-handle the connections hard enough to break something. And the Belkin sockets are plenty tough. It comes with it's own power supply which is more than adequate to support devices that draw their energy from the USB connection.

My only gripe is a typical one of all USB hubs - the box isn't heavy enough to overcome the pull of the USB wires. Of course, making it so would significantly effect the price of a very affordable device. This really is only an issue if you have to keep plugging and unpluging things. I gave up and grabbed a roll of double sided tape - end of problem.

I have one of these connected to a Power Mac MDD 867 and it works fine. Like the first reviewer, I used double-sided foam tape to secure the hub to my desk. Connected to it and working fine are a Lexmark printer, Canon scanner (bus-powered), Griffin iMic, Wacom Graphire tablet, Clie dock, Plantronics USB headset, and a Logitech MX710 mouse.

and it just died last week. Great hub I'm buying another!

Three stars for the following reasons:

1) This hub appears to support only a 12 MBps data rate. This is sufficient for most USB accessories but not for large data transfers to devices like hard drives. It takes me 30 mins to transfer a 1GB file. I was not aware of this limitation until I actually tested it.

2) I could not find this part number listed anywhere on Belkin's web site.

When USB was first announced, it was supposed to have "daisy-chaining" so every peripheral would have its own connectors to allow up to a theoretical limit of I think over 100 devices. Well, the spec provides for it, but when the devices FINALLY started to hit the market, almost none of them bothered to build in the USB port(s) for connecting other peripherals! The extra 91 cents or so was just too much, I guess, along with contention and power attenuation issues.

So for a long time, PCs had two USB ports, but needed more like ten. Hubs like this puppy were the solution: compact, ample capacity, and packing its own power for the hungry peripherals. (One-seventh of the power pipeline is fine for a mouse, but a scanner or the like, powered entirely by the USB line, needs extra juice.)

As the product name says, and the web page title says, and the description says, this is a USB 1.1 spec device. Hence it carries data at 12 MBps, which was screamin' at the time, but pokey in the 21st century. Black magic lets the identical-looking USB 2 barrel along way faster, and two flavors of firewire move at up to 800 MBps. (I still remember Intel's announcement of this revolutionary, lightning-fast new spec, the ideal solution for demanding new apps like video and multimedia.) And I still have some pre-USB webcams and scanners, with their bulky, balky connections into keyboard and printer cables, and huge AC power plugs.

For modern video equipment or hard drives, CD drives, etc., this is obviously too slow for comfort. And this unit is just no good as a firewire hub, a phone jack, or a CB radio. But since it's not sold as any of those things, that's not a problem. As a USB 1.1 hub, suitable for most peripherals (mice, tablets, printers, etc.), it's great. Actually as I write this, it seems not to be available at all, on Amazon anyway, so this may well be moot. Careful shopping will find USB 2 devices for about the price of 1.1, so the end is near for this ancient standard. I doubt we'll be seeing the F5U027 for sale again in this space.

Beware - Belkin's site does not have any documentation, drivers or firmware updates for this hub, so if you have a problem with it, you're on your own. I have one, and after installing a minor operating system upgrade, none of the devices plugged into the hub is recognized by the computer (and each one works just fine when plugged directly into the computer's USB ports). Since there are no updates and no support available from Belkin, it's basically a useless piece of junk now.