Customer Reviews

IOGEAR 5-Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 PCI Card GIC251U

5 star:		(116)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I have windows XP and ordered this PCI card. I opened up my PC box, took out the old creative sound blaster from its PCI slot and slid in the Iogear USB 2.0 PCI card. I booted up my computer and voila! XP automatically detected the card and I have my mouse connected to one of the 4 exposed external USB ports. Its working and no problems encountered at all.

Note that there are 4 slots exposed externally, and 1 is an internal USB slot.

The card installed easily into my G4 tower, and USB devices work fine. However, the card does not support deep sleep on the Mac with OSX 10.4.2, which is not reflected in the listing or advertising. The G4 requires a hard restart every time it goes into deep sleep (fans and drives powered down) with the card installed.

I bought a Compaq Presario 5410US from Amazon in 2002, as well as a Cannon digital camera and printer, probably purchases similar to those made by many Amazon customers. I suppose, therefore, that many of you have also been frustrated by the slow downloading of digital pictures speed of the old USB 1.0 port, but have been leeary of tampering with your hardware. So, was I, but this product was easy to install and has worked great, truly greatly decreasing the time it takes to download pictures (at least 10 times faster, probably much more).
BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS! The fine print says, the system works with Windows XP if you have "Service Pack 1" installed. It took me a long time to figure out what that was and how to install it, but it is really simple. Do a "Google Search" on the internet to find the free site for downloading "Windows XP Service Pack 1." A warning says the download and installation might take 45 minutes with a regular slow modem and phone line connection. I have the slowest of internet connections and modems, but it only took 10 minutes to download and install the service pack 1 free upgrade. Then, you need to reboot (i.e. turn off and turn on again) your computer with this upgrade.
I couldn't find my computer manual when I needed it, but by clicking on the "Start" button on my computer and an "about your computer" link, I was able to access a diagram of the insides of my computer, showing where the extra PCI slots are. This is probably obvious to most people, they are the only empty, pretty long slots. The instructions say to just slip the USB 2.0 Card into the slot - pretty much true, but on my Compaq computer you also have to unscrew and remove a sort of metal "flap" that has served as a cover for the slot opening of the computer box, protecting the insides of the computer, until a PCI card with ports is installed. For the techno-phobic, this was a scary thing to do without explicit instructions to do so, though in hindsight, it should have been obvious.
After you have downloaded the Service Pack 1 upgrade, installed the USB 2.0 Card, and rebooted your computer, a "New Hardware Detected Wizard Window" will be shown on your screen. It says to install the new hardware CD software, if the hardware came with one. If you have Windows XP, you must download the Service Pack and NOT put the software CD in your CD drive (I tried every other combination of wrong moves). When you see the Wizard, do NOT close the wizard box and do NOT put in the software CD, just click "NEXT" and follow the simple instructions of the Wizard Windows. Within a few minutes the Wizard will have set up the computer to recognize and utilize the USB 2.0 PCI Card.
My pictures from my (wonderful, new) Cannon Digital Rebel camera now download with amazing speed, but I should mention that I use a ScanDisk 512MB ULTRA II CF card and a ScanDisk 8 in 1 USB 2.0 HI-speed Reader. Before I installed the new PCI card, even with that equipment download was extremely slow, but I do not know if it would now be so fast without those products.
Most of what I have said here would be obvious to the techno-savvy, but I lost an afternoon to making stupid mistakes because I didn't know the above, and was about to write a 1-star review, panning this product, until I figured all this out. If you follow the instructions above, you could probably go through all of these steps in half an hour and be very happy with your results! Hope this saves some of you the headaches I went through.

Once you get it connected, this is a great little card that will speed you through digital camera and MP3 player uploads. Mine didn't come with instructions so, I assumed correctly that you're supposed to install the software first, restart, and then shutdown. From there you can take apart the computer and install the card. My card however still did not work and I was about ready to Google away for an answer when I decided to e-mail the company instead. Someone from their tech response team quickly replied, "Try placing the card in different PCI slots on the motherboard in case there is an I/O conflict with one of your other devices." Not that I know or care what an I/O is in the first place, but I did as they recommended and voila it works like a charm.

Do not install the software if you are running os 10.2 or greater.
It will cause your computer to not boot up. This is a problem that Iogear is aware of, but only after sending out the manuels.
Without installing any software the card works. Just started using it today, all peripherals work fine.

Needed more than two USB ports for my home office destop PC. This card was a perfect fit. Didn't even need to use the included drivers because Windows 2000 and XP already support it. The price was right, too. Highly recommended.

This will not work with Windows 7. I called IOGear and they confirmed that there are no DRIVERS for Windows 7. What a waste of time.

I have a Dell Dimension running winXP SP2 and this card isn't recognized. In fact, I get an error as soon as the PC powers up, before windows launches. I have no idea what's wrong; I've reseated the card so I doubt it's a connectition problem. Perhaps I have a defective unit.

[Update: IOGear customer service responded by email the same day and suggested I swap this card with another to clear up the problem, and the fix worked. I'm impressed with that level of customer service and the card seems to work fine now. I would rate this a 4 now that it's working.]

My Hewlett-Packard desktop PC (nearly four years old) has two USB 1.1 ports, but I needed more ports and needed to upgrade to USB 2.0, so I contacted the local computer repair/maintanence shop and quickly realized that upgrading a piece of hardware was something I could probably do. After finding this product, I ordered the Iogear 5 port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 PCI card; four days later, the product came via FedEx-Ground yesterday (Jan. 31). Opening my CPU wasn't as hard as I figured it would be, but what was a bit tricky was removing the metal slot-cover of the PCI slot I chose to use--but when the cover was out, the PCI card slipped in easily and I replaced the card-holding screw. Now I know what "Plug-and-Play" really means! After only about ten minutes, my computer was back up and running. The O.S.--Windows ME--recognized the new hardware, but I had to install the drivers from the Iogear CD.

I now have four USB 2.0 ports for the three USB-powered devices I have, so I don't have to swap their cables in and out anymore.

What prompted me to do this hardware upgrade was that, for Christmas, I got a Seagate 160-gig external hard-drive; initially, the hard-drive was sluggish, due to the data-transfer limitations of USB 1.1; but now the hard-drive works great. Also, the external drive no longer bogs down my computer's processing power (766 Mhz Celeron).

What's amazing is the 40-times difference between USB 2.0 and 1.1

I'm really happy with this PCI card--it's precisely what I needed. What I'm even happier with is the fact that I saved money buy installing the card myself; I didn't have to rely on the local computer shop and be charged an extra $50 for labor ($70 was the price I'd been quoted, presuming the shop would've installed a $20 5-port USB PCI card similar to this Iogear product).

Instead of investing in a new computer (I don't care for Windows XP, anyway), I think I'll just gradually make the computer I have better.

Overall, I'm glad I made the decision to upgrade to USB 2.0 -- thanks, Iogear, for making this fairly inexpensive PCI card.

This product works exactly as advertised. After seating the card, my computer immediately recognized it and installed the required drivers (an installation disk is also supplied if needed). Works extremely well with my iPod. This product was purchased after I initially purchased an inferior Startech PCI card. The card is a great value!