USB-Cable Reviews

plug and play installation on winxp. the fifth port is kind of useless because it's on the inside, but it's still cheaper than most of the four port pci cards. nice product.

i thought this project was pretty good. i wasnt totally satisfied with its performance but i would recommend getting it.

I used this hub to attach a usb printer, cd-rw drive, and diskette drive to my new iBook, which had only one usb port. Everything worked well, the color of the hub matched the iBook, and the hub itself was unobtrusive on my desk.

The USB pocket hub is an interesting kinda "halfway" device. It's really meant for use with PowerBooks (and, though the product information listed here doesn't say so, Windows-based notebooks as well), but connecting more devices to the hub makes a PowerBook inherently less portable. I'm not sure how much of a market there really is for a portable USB hub, but if there is one, this device is about as portable as you can get. You can easily slip it into your pocket if you need to go a-wanderin'. And it can be powered by the included, not-so-lightweight AC adapter if you need to connect more power hungry devices, like scanners and printers.

Still, I can't help thinking that it will be bought more by desktop owners than PowerBook fans, simply because hubs are by their nature more suited for use with bigger, more 'anchored' machines. To that extent, it's an elegant addition, because the included color sleeves make it possible to match with most colors of machine. The drawback is if you have a LOT of USB devices to attach. It's not really meant to be stackable, and you might find it awkward to have more than two of these attached to your machine. But I'd say if you have less than 9 devices, this is a graceful, fully-functional way to go.

I bought this product, and it turned out to work fine, but I had trouble getting it started. For instance, for the sound in, you need to configure it, but in the instruction book you are supposed to put "sound in", when it is really "NT1004". Also, you can't run the program through classic, because it won't capture the video, so youi have to restart the computer in OS 9.2. The product is good, but the instructions are very bad.

I first posted a very negative review because I thought this product didn't work. Well, it does charge the phone, it just gives no visual feedback that it's doing so. Every charger I've ever seen, including this same product for Samsung phones, lights up the phone, shows a battery charge indicator, and says that it's charging. This doesn't do that. I thought I had two defective products, but finally in desperation left a phone plugged in overnight even though it showed no evidence of doing anything. Well, it DID charge the phone. So, I've changed the review from 1 star to 4. You just have to trust that it's working.

I don't know how quickly it charges, but it does seem to work.

I was thinking about purchasing some new surround sound speakers for my laptop which I use as my primary computer. Most laptops don't have built-in surround sound capability, and I absolutely refuse to pay $80 or more for the Audigy USB solution. On a recent trip to Circuit City, I found the Starlogic for about half that and bought the Logitech Z-640 speakers based on other reviews.

The Starlogic is very easy to set up. Just plug it in to a USB port. If you are using Windows 2000/XP, it automatically recognizes it. No drivers required. The built-in sound card was automatically disabled and sound output was sent to the Starlogic. The manual has a lot of grammatical errors as if it was written in a foreign language and translated to very bad English. There is one major step that was left out. You must go into the Control Panel > Sounds and Multimedia and change the speaker setting to 5.1 Surround and then again in the configuration options in your favorite DVD player.

There are three buttons: MUTE, SUR, MIC. The SUR emulates surround sound ("Q-Space technology") if you are listening to music or whatever that was not encoded with Dolby Digital sound. It is automatically disabled if you are playing back DD sound. My biggest complaint is that it is not automatically re-enabled when you are done watching a DD-encoded movie. The MIC button toggles the amplification of the line-in port. On the enclosed CD is a copy of WinDVD 3.1, a speaker testing application, some really lame movie previews, and a no-name CD music ripping/burning application.

Overall, the sound isn't as good compared to my Koss C220 Home Theater. That could be the speakers, but I definitely have surround sound now. Anything is better than the cheap 2.1 and built-in laptop speakers I was using before.

For those us poor schleps without any other broadband alternative, ISDN is a viable option. If you are looking to head down this path, the 3Com adapter is a good option. It will provide a fairly easy to configure, reliable connection. Unfortunately, like all 3Com modems, it is overpriced. Check out the auction sites, as people are jumping from ISDN to DSL or cable modems every day.

This cradle seems quite nice. However I had to return it when it arrived because it doesn't include a power adapter. So I thought I'd add a note here just to let others know.

Another review writer mentioned overlapping IRQs - which suggests they were out of the loop when the entire computer world changed to Level Triggered IRQs. In a nutshell, current systems are designed to share IRQs, this is a critical function for any system. If you have older PCI based cards or a computer older than 4 years this is when you can see problems, as they use what are called Edge Triggered IRQs and are not shareable.

Still, installing add-in cards to your PC is not for the faint of heart or the uninformed, even with the advances in Plug and Play technologies. Get your friendly neighborhood computer genius to help if you don't feel you're savvy enough.

That being said, this card from Adaptec works flawlessly, and has some nice features designed into it. The bus mastering PCI functions work reasonably well, unlike some lower priced cards that seem to cause more lock-ups and pauses. The addition of an internal Firewire and USB connections are a great help to case modders and others who build their own systems yet still want ports on the front side of their machine so they don't have to reach around the back. Having USB and Firewire on the same card is handy, since most older systems using USB 1.1 use a riser card that can be replaced easily with the Adaptec.

A good value for a complete high-speed hot pluggable I/O solution.

Let me try to make a long story short.

I bought a Dazzle Firewire card with Ulead software so that I could capture video. I didn't work when I got it and I never got it to work in spite of multiple attempts. Dazzle Techs said it was Ulead's fault and Ulead said it was Dazzle's. Neither company tried to help me out.

I bought the adaptec combo card, hoping that it would work.
I installed it and the accompanying software. It didn't work.
I called Canon. They helped me by sending me to Microsoft for
a plug-in. The card still didn't work. I just about gave up but decided to call Adaptec for help.

It was a toll call but the Adaptec Tech walked me through the
entire process of getting the card working. I'd guess that he spend a good 45 mintues with me as we checked my system out and straightened out all the problems that the Dazzle card and drivers left in my system. I am a business owner so I know exactly how important good customer care is. You can have the best product in the world but if you don't care about your customers, you're business is going to eventually fail.

Adaptec makes a great product AND they have one of the very best Tech Support teams that I have ever dealt with to back the product.

Buy This One !

I installed this into a Windows 2000 machine and it works flawlessly. It didn't require the installation of any extra drivers--Windows already had all that was required. The card has everything I need for my high-bandwidth requiring devices. It even has internal ports so I can plug the Firewire port on the front of my computer into it. Highly recommended!