I got the same HUB in another deal in FW of the same price thinking it includes AC Adapter. Unfortunately, it doesn't include AC Adapter. Does anybody know where to get the cheap AC Adapter????
wherehk
Happy Member
posted: Sep. 18, 2009 @ 2:44a
Kingofthenet said: Yeah i got one from Meritline? and it had an ac adapter included. You got to be careful daisy chaining these bad boys is going to cause issues.
urgh, can you extrapolate? guessing why it would be problematic, but would love more informed expertise.
FrugalFreak said: store in title would be helpful.
I agree but as soon as I saw the coupon code I was sure it was Shop4tech.
Remember, it does not say it comes with or NEEDS external power and while It might not run 100% with seven power-hungry gadgets, it will work well for many uses that don't require tons of power.
wherehk said: Kingofthenet said: Yeah i got one from Meritline? and it had an ac adapter included. You got to be careful daisy chaining these bad boys is going to cause issues.
urgh, can you extrapolate? guessing why it would be problematic, but would love more informed expertise.
This product is not a great idea (especially for laptops) because USB powered devices use electricity. The power that one USB port can provide is limited, so it won't function properly when overloaded.
For example, on my Macbook, there are two USB ports. I was running a Western Digital USB powered external hard drive (not "daisy chained", just plugged into the normal port), and the drive made strange clicking noises and did not work properly. I looked into it and found out that one of the ports is the "primary port" and the other shares its power with other components. I switched ports and the drive has been working perfectly for over a year now.
The example I gave doesn't specifically relate to why this product is not a good idea, but it does illustrate that USB ports have limited power. If you plan to use it with mostly non-USB powered devices, it would be great. I'm not an expert, but I think you get the idea...
QuixoticOne
Senior Member
posted: Sep. 18, 2009 @ 5:51p
I'm tempted, but the uncertainty about the AC adapter and secondarily the weird built in cables design sort of kills it for me. Decent price on a 7 port hub though. I really just wanted to chime in on some of the other concerns about hubs. Power -- a lot of devices like many optical mice, high end keyboards (especially ones with built in USB hubs of their own), or certainly USB powered hard drives, et. al. do use a lot of power from the USB bus.
It is a VERY good idea to use external power on any USB hub that is going to be a primary permanently wired desktop unit since otherwise you're just asking to overload the USB port's power supply, and possibly damage the motherboard's USB circuit. Motherboards / hubs are SUPPOSED to be protected from over current problems and to detect / handle the condition by putting the port(s) offline according to the USB specification, but lots of devices seem to have serious problems nevertheless.
Also I don't know if it is just me, but a lot of the cheap hubs and some of the cheap cables I've gotten have resulted in very frequently repeatable data corruption problems due to bad signal integrity. e.g. I'll try to burn a DVD on an external USB DVD drive and the disc verify will often fail. I'll copy files from a USB flash disc and the hash/checksum on the file that got transferred will be wrong after the copy due to data corruption. I'll try to boot from a USB connected drive and the boot will fail due to BIOS bugs or USB data corruption or whatever. Not always, but often enough that I don't trust USB much for use with flash / hard disc storage connections through hubs in most cases and I just plug them into the motherboard directly and seem to often get better results. This sort of data corruption SHOULD be getting detected / handled / retried transparently until the data is received successfully but I can say from experience that often this is not the case!
The other real low point in sleazy marketing is the deceptive practice of calling things "USB 2.0" with no further specification implying to most people that it is a more modern / fast device. Actually it is perfectly possible to have a USB 2.0 hub / device that only supports the old LOW SPEED (1Mb/s) and maybe FULL SPEED (12Mb/s), but does NOT support the "HIGH SPEED" 480Mb/s rate which was simultaneously made POSSIBLE with the USB 2.0 specification, but is not REQUIRED to be supported by a USB 2.0 compatible device. So unless you're sure the product is rated for HIGH SPEED operation, assume that it isn't.
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