Customer Reviews

NEW! Notebook 4 Port Ports 4Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA PC Card Bus Adapter Laptop/Notebook

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

 

 

I bought this card a few years ago. It was very easy to set up in Windows XP & worked flawlesly for about 2 years.
Recently I started losing ports, now, none are left so I'm back searching for another card.
If you only plan to have your laptop for a few years. This card is a bargain & you'll be very happy with it.
Some purchasing advice:
1. Most of these cards are a little large so if you're concerned with carrying your laptop in a case & want to have USB 2.0 available all the time buy a smaller card.
2. Many of these cards can't supply power on their own to a device, such as charging your cell phone while you sync it. So if need or want to connect devices that require power, be sure to get one that has a power connector (like this one). This is a short cable that plugs into a real USB powered port at one end & the card at the other to supply power to the card.

I bought this to use a WD Passport USB 2.0 Drive with an old laptop which only had one USB 1.0. I bought this one since it had the ability to take the power from the USB 1 and use it to drive a USB 2.0 device. When I hooked it up I couldn't get the drive to be recognized. After talking to WD support they said it probably wasn't getting enough power to operate properly. Given this info, I connected an external 5.0 VDC supply to this card versus using the USB 1 power. It now works like a charm. The card was not the problem in this case, and because it enabled passing through 5VDC to the USB 2.0 devices I was able to make it work. My only suggestion is they should document the power of one USB 1.0 connector might not be sufficient to drive a USB 2.0 drive and sell or reference external supplies.

down side of this product (sort of) is that it takes one of the usb port to bring power to the pcmcia, it comes with a cable to do that. Other than that it works just great.

Item came with no written documentation - just the unit in a box with a CD and it's not an autorun CD when you install it. Had to search through the disk's folders and feel my way to figure out how to install. Found a manual in one of the folders and found a section on how to install to WinXP, but actual installation did not match what was described in the manual. Plugged it in, Windows found it, installed its own drivers and said it's now ready to use. So I plugged a thumbdrive into it, and nothing happened. Plugged an SD card reader into it, nothing. Plugged a mouse into it, nothing. I knew that this required power to run certain connections but I figured that referred to larger gizmos, not small things like thumbdrives.

I went back to manual and found this (pasted below):
"Without power Adapter, the USB Bus provides 100mA current only. If the USB external device, such as Hard Disk, needs power more than this; please install the power adapter.
* Note the maximum power supply is 500mA. Please provides self-power, if the device power consumption is over this limit."

So obviously, those three devices I tried to use required more than 100mA of power.
This unit does not come with AC power, only an adapter cable. But I happened to already have a 4-port hub that is powered by an AC plug. (I can't use it anymore because it plugs in via USB and my built-in USB ports are hosed, which is why I bought this one.) So I took the AC plug (which thankfully put out the required 5V) and plugged it into this, and then everything I plugged into it began to work. That's fine...but it also means I have to be plugged into a power source at all times while using this unit with my laptop.
Oh well, better than nothing.

This PC card adapter does not work on my old laptop. There is not enought power to supply the ports. I have to face the fact that my old laptop has the original USB system and there is nothing I can do to remedy that. The item purchase works ok on newer computers but it should say it does not work on older ones.

I got this very quickly. However, it did not work. I am sending it back.