USB-Cable Reviews

Purchased this with the expectation of full use of what is now standard 3-button/wheel mice (PS2). After neither an XP nor an NT4 system booted with mouse support I sent an email to Hawking Tech. Support. Their response was "We can only guarantee full compatiblity with 2 button mice. -- Hawking Technical Support (CH)"
The product is being returned... my search goes on.

for laptops this needs an AC adapter that is not included. For my desktop computer I boot my computer and it doesn't recognize my mouse for WindowsXP... If I hit restart a couple times before the screen appears it then works fine. I assume this has something to do with the lack of power. It is inconvenient, but I gues it works fine.

I agree with the comments added, yes it does us non-standard cables, which can prove frustrating if you didn't know ahead of time. Once I found that out, I have had no problems using a wheel mouse with the switch.
I have noticed that sometimes the hot keys don't register so I have to switch by hand, but still not a major problem...even when running all four machines through it.

I would recommend this CDRW to someone only if he/she didn't have other ports -- IDE, SCSI, firewire -- with which to connect an external CDRW. USB is slow, right now you can get 8x and some 12x burners for the same price as this 4x USB burner.

I've read many good and bad reviews about this product before I tried it out, some people just can't get it to work reliably. It works with my Apple Powerbook G3 with built-in USB ports. It works really well, I can burn at 4x speed consistently. What I like best is that the burner is very quiet (soundless when it's not recording and just a quiet hum when it is). It's also portable, this burner even comes with its own bag.

The main drawback is I have to minimize my extensions/drivers whenever I need to use it, otherwise I get recording errors. I have an extension set with just the base MacOS 9 extensions plus the Toast USB driver (so I have to restart before and after burning, not very convenient). Also worked with MacOS 8.6 this way.

I am usually suspect when reviewing an installation manual containing numerous typos, and this manual was confusing enough to call customer support. After 30 minutes on hold, the tech support guy was most condescending and I was ready to take the unit back for a refund. However, I muddled through and the CD-RW is working like a champ! The unit is affordable, well constructed, attractive and compactly packed in its' own carrying case, and I'm now convinced that it will prove to be a portable and reliable device to back up our PC and Mac computers wherever we go.

I bought this CD burner 2 weeks ago and it's been working fine from the start. Hopefully, I won't have the same problems as the previous reviewer. Amazon should include contact information for every product they sell. Not just an e-mail address but also phone numbers, when available. Consumer reports always does this. Additionally, it is February 6 and the rebate is still factored into the price when the rebate expired a week ago.

In order to get it to Hotsync with my Clie 760c, I have to hold the hotsync cable tightly to the PDA, otherwise it won't connect, or will start to hotsync and then disconnect.

This review is to apologetically amend my previous post (below) for the iConcepts USB HotSync Cable. I just learned (from the instructions included in my recently received Sony Clie Travel Kit) that it is indeed possible to sync my Clie -- without using a hot sync button -- by tapping on the "Hot Sync" icon on my Clie's program menu. (Unfortunately, since a hot sync button was always a feature on my previous Palm V cradles and sync cords -- I didn't know this.)

The iConcepts USB HotSync Cable works fine. After following the directions (provided by Sony) I was able to sync my Clie successfully by working from my PDA's icon menu.

I would like to suggest to iConcepts that they might want to consider including instructions with their USB hot sync cord -- since I'm sure there are other Palm OS (operating system) users out there, like me, who may yet not know how to live "buttonless."

This cable does not fit the Coolpix 800, as advertised. Buy at your own risk.

From Nikon's web site:

UC-E1 USB cable for the Coolpix 5700, 5000, 4500, 4300, 995, 990, 885 and 880. For use with a computer that is equiped with a USB port only. System Requirements MAC OS 8.1 or later or Windows 98/2000.

Not just for the 990, and not for the 800 (as previous reviewer was disappointed to find out). I haven't used it yet, so I'm giving it a 4 on the assumption it works.

I bought a baby shirt and it doesnt fit me, 1 star! DEEEERRR! Read the label, its not supposed to work with the 800!

I bought this cable along with my Tungsten E, because I wanted a serial hotsynch cable for my laptop. However, it doesn't work with the Tungsten E, which allows only for a mini-USB connector; this is the standard "universal" Palm connector - universal, apparently, except for Tungsten E. I advised Amazon.com of this when I returned it, but they are still selling it with the Tungsten E. Don't be fooled! Palm does not make a cradle or a serial cable for the E.

I bought one of these chargers. It broke within a couple of days. So being loyal to palm I bought another... which never worked! I have a ton of palm stuff and I havent written anything bad about the company, but I found that workmanship to be much lower then what I would expect from such an established company.

I really don't understand why people blame Amazon or Palm for this cable while the description clearly says it's for certain models, and says it's for models with the universal connector. I wish people would take responsibility for themselves more.

Anyway, I got this cable because my office PC runs NT, and it doesn't support USB. The serial cable works perfectly. It doesn't charge your Palm (I have the T2), unlike the USB charge/hotsync cable, and speed is low compared to USB, but it gets the work done.

There is, however, one caveat: you cannot transfer MP3 files with the serial cable, because Real Player cannot recognize it. Palm should really move away from Real and opt for something better; Real is all about bloatware and spyware -- I don't know a single soul who likes its intrusive "message center" annoyance.

The workaround is you'll need to copy the MP3 files to the SD card directly, into the "\music" folder on the card. If you have a laptop with an SD slot, you'll be fine. But chances are if you are still running NT, your laptop won't have the slot. Also all SD card readers are USB. So in the end, it's probably best to upgrade, or borrow your friend's win2k or XP machine.

In short, this cable is cheap and light and seems durable (if you take care in disconnecting the Palm).

I bought this item October 2003 and it broke down today. After holding for 15 minutes to talk with a tech support, I was told since I bought this from an online retailer, Amazon, the company's policy is not to honor the warranty as "anyone can sell online and therefore we don't know what they could have done to the product." Needless to say, I am extremely disappointed. I hope you don't.

The Siemens SS2604 is a great 4-port ethernet router for the money. Compared to other routers made my D-link, Linksys, and Netgear, this one is priced to sell at around $...less. It works great, despite its sparse set-up instructions. The set-up is internet based - requiring the user to enter a specific address into a web browser. This brings up a set-up wizard which is very basic and probably isn't very helpful for people who are new to setting up networks. Still, it's not hard to get the right set-up going (reading the included CD-ROM manual maybe advisable). In my case, I run some firewall software in addition to the router, so I had to adjust a few more things before I got this router to work. I play a MMORPG on one PC and surf the net on the other using this router. I've had no problems whatsoever. If you're looking for a basic router with a print server as well, the SS2604 is a good deal.

After using a Linksys and then a D-Link, this is now my favorite SOHO router. I replaced a D-Link DI-604 and am very glad I did.

The setup's easy. I powered everything down, removed my old router, plugged in the new router, and powered everything back up. The router configured itself, and I was connected just like that!

The SS2604 includes a lot of smart features. I use the print server with my Epson Color Stylus 880 and have no problems (in fact, the printer port is what prompted me to buy the router). The Web administration is pretty simple. Basic users don't have to wade through the advanced stuff, but advanced users can get right to it, and you have a lot of control. A really nice touch is that the router uses DNS PC names (rather than IP addresses) within the setup software when setting a DMZ or opening specific ports ("virtual servers"). Therefore a power drop doesn't require a complete re-config. There's also a site log and a filtering function, which I have yet to use.

Before you set up the Speedstream, DO download the firmware upgrade from speedstream.com. And make sure you have Acrobat installed. The only printed doc is a quickstart guide. Everything else is on CD in PDF format. I'd prefer a paper manual, and including a CAT5 cable or two would be nice.

All in all, it's a great SOHO router, currently selling for about 1/2 the price of comparable products from Netgear, D-Link, and Linksys. If Siemens marketed better this box would sell bundles.

I would give it zero stars if I could. This product may be good for something, but it certainly does NOT do what its packaging advertises; i.e. "easily turn old records and tapes into MP3s or CDs." If you have a PC, stay far, FAR away from this bogus item. The packaging claims that it is designed for Macs AND PCs, and also claims to include a full version of Final Vinyl Recording Software. Both these statements are *technically* true... what the packaging does NOT say is that Final Vinyl does not WORK on a PC--and the only software included for PCs is 30-day trial software you will eventually need to buy for an extra ~$50. Buying such extra software (not even made by Griffin) may or may not be worth it to you--but this does not change the fact that if you did, it would be THAT ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE allowing you to convert your LPs and tapes into mp3s (together with a good RCA-to-3.5mm cable for your sound card), and NOT this product at all!! As far as converting old LPs, the only thing you can do with this product alone (using the Sound Recorder that YOU ALREADY HAVE preinstalled in Windows) is to record sound bytes NO MORE THAN 60 SECONDS LONG... now tell me how many of the songs on your old LPs and tapes are less than 60 seconds long? So without additional software, from another company, at an additional cost, this product will do absolutely nothing for you (unless you have some burning need for sound bytes under 60 seconds long).
But just to be fair, before returning this product to the store (not Amazon), I e-mailed Griffin to make sure I was not overlooking something, and got a defensive and insulting reply from someone in tech support (we'll call him Wendall), who told me, "I apologize that *you* do not have a full understanding of what our product does." To which I reply, "Well, Wendall, I understand that your product does not do what its packaging claims." Another amusing piece from Wendall was his technical(ity) argument that "Nowhere on the packaging does it say that you do not need any recording software." Is this man a lawyer or what? Okay, Wendall... this is exactly what it says on the packaging: 1) that the product works on PCs and Macs (presumably, the *whole* product--including the enclosed software?); 2) that a full version of Final Vinyl Recording Software is included; and 3) that the PURPOSE of the product is to "easily turn old records and tapes into MP3s or CDs" (for goodness' sakes!). But I guess we are just supposed to guess as to whether 'working on a PC' extends to the included software?? Wendall's take on this was that "we do not say anywhere on our packaging that [Final Vinyl] is either a Mac or PC application." (MY POINT EXACTLY!! Ya don't think that might have been a helpful thing to mention on there somewhere??)
In addition to the misleading packaging, there are next to no setup/installation instructions included (for these, you have to go online--and even then they are very brief, unclearly written, contradictory, and do not answer the questions you would think one would need to ask). One precious design gem is that you have to push the switch to the opposite side from the function you actually want to use; e.g. to enable the microphone, you push it AWAY from the mic symbol... nice, huh? My iMic (otherwise known as the headache of this past weekend) is going right back to the store for a full refund, as is the 3' RCA extension cable I had to buy to hook this useless gadget up in the first place... that is, if Radio Shack will even take it back opened (if not, that is six bucks down the drain, thanks to Griffin).
NUTSHELL: maybe this device improves sound once you have all other not-included required components in place (I wouldn't know, since I was duped into thinking it came with software that would work on my computer--and since it doesn't, I can't use it)--but it *definitely* does NOT serve alone to convert old analog music to CDs, as its packaging implies with a capital I. Consumer, beware!!!!!!

I'm using it to record NPR. I used to use a PCI sound card but got annoyed at all the noise and buzz coming from the computer. The solution was move the sound card outside the computer. It records faithfully and quietly. I'm not going to say it's easy to get it working under Linux, since sound is still not trivial, but I was successful and am very happy with this product.

I currently using Redhat Linux 9, with Alsa 1.0 patches and ecasound to do the recording. One upshot of switching to usb audio was that the quality of the recording improved so much that the size of the recordings got smaller. Now I get excellent sound quality using VBR and average about 12kbps.

This device is a totally plug-n-play way of adding sound input capability to your Mac. It plugs into a spare USB port and accepts a mini mono mic/line input. G4 Macs, among others, come with a line in audio jack, but they have no mic input and can't amplify a mic enough to make it audible. So, if you want to use an unpowered mic for direct sound-in to your mac, this is a cost-effective way to go!

The driver came installed with Jaguar, so there was no installing to do - I plugged it into the USB port and the Mac OS immediately recognized it. It shows up in the 'Sound' pane of System Preferences and is easy to select. There's a handy level meter there, so you can twiddle the amplification just right.

I've used it for a couple months to DJ my live internet radio broadcast, which goes out over the "airwaves" as a 56K internet stream. I'm using it with a cheap Radio Shack combo phones/mic headset (nine bucks), and the sound quality is totally adequate. I'd agree with the manufacturer, though, that you oughtn't expect to use this for studio-quality sound; although I can't discern any distortion or hiss from the peripheral over my cheap speakers or headphones.

This device works best when plugged into its own USB port. I had trouble when using it on USB busses that already had a lot of activity.

It fails to get 5 stars because the cable is too short - only about 18 inches - not really even long enough to make it around to the front of the computer. Also, there's an occasional (once a week) bug/problem with sound degradation after the computer's been asleep. Unplugging and re-plugging in the peripheral fixes this problem, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there at all.

In short, if you need average quality mic-level sound input into your Mac, and price is important to you, this is the peripheral you need!

This came with a Dell Computer in a package from QVC as a family
computer,but before I could run a whole cartridge of ink through it the paper advance started crumpling up paper after paper.
Tech support on Lexmarks website explains how it works and the paper advance is overengineered. Factory service is too far away and for what they charge you might just as well throw it away. Which is what I am going to do. When it worked it was ok.

This is one of the greatest and scariest deals on the market. Every review I have read has a bit of truth to it. The scanner and printer work wonderfully, provide great colors and images.
However the bundled software and downloadable drivers stink. It would be wonderful to have a powerful image editor with the scanner but you are stuck with MGI Photosuite. Second, the drivers stink.
I spent about 8 hours trying to figure out why my Windows ME system would no longer load after adding the printer. I would get past the ME screen, log in and then have a black screen. What I eventually had to to was rename a file called lexpps.exe and deselect all the startup system tray items related to lexmark. This has helped so far so we shall see.
The drivers are a hit and miss type of thing and really depends on your system, windows and a bit of luck. Lexmark should really update their drivers and work on better helping their existing and for some soon to be ex-customers.
Love the machine, hate the hassle.

Hello my name is Travis and I own the Lexmark X73 and I am very happy with it. I wrote a review on this printer and it was telling how to install the drivers for Window XP. The thing I find most helpful when install the X73 is to unplug from the printer not the wall when the screen comes up about "you can connect the USB cable to the printer".

Have the printer power up and UBS cable plug in the computer and printer when you get the error message can not find printer or scanner unplug it from printer and re-plug in back in XP should then detect the Lexmark X73.

i have the veo advanced connect ,it has worked one time,when i'am on a web site everyone esle can see but i can not see any thing that is being shared they can see me but i can not see my self on the screen?can some one let me know what the problem is????????

I own two smooth running Windows PCs. One runs Windows 98 First Edition, the other runs Second Edition. The Veo Advance Connect Camera worked on neither of them.

In fact, upon installing it on one computer, a blue screen-fatal system error automatically popup and persisted as long as the camera was plugged in. Perhaps this problem could be solved- I wouldn't know' tech support never e-mailed back. After 7 days, I gave up on this cheap, hopeless camera and returned it promptly for a Logitech 310 Webcam, one that has decent quality, but at least works.

I have been with the web cam for several months and I
love it very much. The picture quality is pretty nice
in both online instant message programs and local pic-
taking application. Well, the only thing I would
complain about this camera is the looking: not that
pretty :-) Well, it is not web cam not a decoration for
my room.. So no big deal for me.. And plus I like the
"spider" stander which fits my LCD monitor perfectly.
And you can switch the spdier to a flat stander as well.
I video-conversated with my friends and they are impressed
by my image quality and several of them even got the same
one for themselves..

Buy the PalmConnect USB kit and you will get a full-time job trying to troubleshoot this little thing. Apparently there are a lot of issues (mainly for windows XP users) and palm does not provide you with good support nor information.

There are many bad reviews about this USB kit, but I decided to try it anyway. I have a laptop that has not serial port and a Palm IIIxe. Well, I went through the installation and everything went well but at the last step, it would not synchronize. I contacted Palm support and in a few hours (yep, not one day, or two days, but just a few hours) they sent me an email with the solution. And IT WORKED!.

Here are my suggestions to others who want to give this USB kit a try: (My laptop runs Windows 98SE, btw)
-Don't use the CD for the installation of the drivers... Look to the right and choose the PalmConnect USB kit software for your O.S.
-On the download page, they include installation instructions that vary a little bit from those included in the CD. Make sure you follow the installation instructions on this Web page.
-Before you synchronize, make sure that the HotSync software has Local USB and Local Serial checked. (This was the solution to my problem). To make sure, these options are checked, right click on the HotSync icon on the System Tray, and see if Local USB and Local Serial have check marks next to them. Now synchronize.

This should do it! :) It worked for me! Everything runs a-okay. :)

I bought this item when it was 3.99 and it was new. Than I installed it. On my computer I had palm desktop 4.0. Than Ihooked it up and it worked for the first time I hot synced it. Than I would do it again and it froze. I brought it in to bestbuy. They said install the software it came with and delete palm desktop 4.0. I did what they said and it worked fine.