Thanks for visiting Palm Discovery

(Last updated Dec 14, 2007)

Palm Discovery would like to extend a BIG THANKS to Thomas of USB Fever for providing the product for this review.

In this day and age when practically most accessories and peripherals are now USB powered, it’s not surprising that many of us will encounter the dreaded problem that all your USB ports are used up. Just think. Earlier computers (like mine) come with 2 USB ports. Nowadays, most come with 4. But even that isn’t enough. You plug in your mouse, add a webcam, add your PDA hotsync cable and you have only one left. What to do? Fret not, because this can be easily solved by getting a USB hub.

What’s a USB hub? Well, bascially, it’s a hub or a center where all the USB periperals can connect to and in a somewhat similar idea to the connection portion of what a router does, it allows a number of USB devices to connect simultaneously but the connection is shared amongst all the connected devices. The Wikipedia definition of a USB hub “is a device that allows many USB devices to be connected to a single USB port on the host computer or another hub”. Of course, to use the hub, you have to first connect it to one of the free USB ports of your computer and take up a USB port. Once plugged in, you can then connect more USB devices directly into the hub instead.

USB Fever’s USB 2.0 7-Port Compact Hub is amazingly small in size. It’s smaller in size than a business card (of course, it’s thicker though) but yet it can support up to 7 USB ports and can be powered up with an included AC power adapter. It will also work without the power adapter. The adapter is there to help boost and power up power hungry 2.0 devices that you may connect to the hub. There’s a row of 5 USB ports on one side of the hub and 2 additional ports on the other with a port for the AC adapter and for the cable to connect the hub to your computer’s USB port.

There are no drivers required. Simply plug it into your computer and it will detect, find and install the necessary drivers to get it to work. It’s very much plug and play. And I love that.

(updated Dec 14, 2007)

NOTE: Please keep in mind that the USB hub with the AC adapter I am reviewing for this review are NOT EXACTLY the same model reviewed by DragonSteelMods. It looks very similar but my model DOES NOT have a hub stand and it DOES NOT have an LED light indicator. Otherwise, it looks very similar. Oh, and the other major difference is that this compact hub is surprisingly very COOL to the touch, even when plugged in the entire day, unlike the other model that the reviewer has noted.

USB Fever has since updated the product page to reflect this model and will be shipping out this particular model instead.

For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

More details (taken from USB Fever’s website):

Features:

- USB2.0 7-Port Compact Hub x 1
- USB Cable x 1
- AC Power Adapter (100-240V, 50/60Hz)

Click on the thumbnail images for a bigger picture

Product Video

Video at YouTube

Here are my observations:

The USB 2.0 7 port Hub is quite a pleasure to use. It is amazingly small, lightweight, very portable and pocketable. It is also very cool to the touch, even when plugged into the AC adapter all day. The ability to add an additional 7 USB ports is quite nice and of course, you can keep adding more in a chain if you wish, which is quite the beauty of having USB hubs.

The hub works very well and didn’t show any difference in transfer speed with a card reader that was testing a Kingston 2 GB card whether it was plugged into the hub or plugged directly into the USB port of a computer using HD Tach. Keep in mind that it is only a 2GB SD card that was tested.

My only quip (if I can even call it that) about this particular hub is that there is no power indicator. But then, as long as it works, it doesn’t really matter. You can easily test whether the hub is powered or not simply by plugging in your USB card reader so in that sense, having a power or light indicator isn’t a big deal. And many other USB peripherals do have a light indicator as well so it will light up when plugged in. Also, the other minor observation I can make about it is the casing, especially the metalic portion of it is quite slippery. Again, these are very minor observations and really don’t affect the use or functionality of the hub.

Review Summary

USB Fever’s 2.0 7 Port Hub is an amazingly small but powerful working hub. It is very lightweight and cool to the touch, even after a day of plugging into the AC adapter, the hub is lukewarm at best. It supports both 2.0 and 1.1 USB devices with ease and works like a charm. Why get bigger USB port hubs when you can get one that’s small, works and you can take it with you everywhere? Okay, you can leave the AC adapter behind and just take the hub and cable with you everywhere as it will work fairly well without the AC adapter.

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