Customer reviews for the Belkin Network USB Hub

This gadget is great for putting USB items onto aq network but it does have limitations.
Your firewall may need some serious tweaking to get it working at its optimum.
It is slow so when using low overhead items like printers and pendrives etc it is OK but stick a 1TB hard drive and it will hang "my computer" for 5 minutes while it initialises. When it has the transfer rate is adequate for small files, but start chucking several Gb of data around and you'll need to be very patient. The web based interface is also exceedingly slow so accessing the unit demands patience.
For small stuff it is great but the slow speed does kick in with large amounts of data.
It does have a tendency to time out over long periods of time (eg 15 mins) which is a pain for big transfers of data or big printing jobs.

Stable item but be aware of restrictions.........

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The information on this web site states the hub is compatible with most scanners. "It also works for most other USB devices, including most standard webcams, keyboards and mice, multifunction machines, scanners, and media readers." After the hub did not work with my Mustek scanner, I phoned Belkin Technical Support and was informed that Scanners do not work with this device.

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If it carries on how its now working, maybe I'd give it 5. However the problems I have encountered this evening whilst trying to set it up have been infuriating. If I hadn't found a suitable power supply for my lacie HDD it wouldn't be working at all. It kept removing the HDD from 'My computer', killing the sync or copy in progres, even though it was showing as 'connected' in the USB hub control centre.
After all the restores, updates, reinstalls, unplugs, etc etc a hardware reboot from the hub's menu finally appears to have worked.
I use Vista & Vaio & have a reliable wifi connection. Technology should just work, out of the box. For me this didn't!

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Perfect for those who use a laptop at home: it allows you to leave your printer/ipod/camera/external hard drive etc tucked away in one room, while you use the laptop elsewhere. However my main reason for purchasing was to add an external hard drive (and avoid carrying it round the house when i used the laptop), so the "this product draws too much power" is a real pain, and therefore doesn't solve my problem. I use a Western Digital (usb powered) passport hard drive. If anyone knows a solution (other than buying a mains powered external hard drive), I would loooove to know. Thanks.

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If you think of this device as a USB hub that runs over ethernet then it is fantastic. Very easy to setup, very easy to use. Works with pretty much any USB device, including USB drives, printers, USB mice etc.

As a multi-user device it pretty much sucks. For a second user to use a device, the first user must manually detach the device from their PC using the management suite.

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I bought one of these on the strength of the positive reviews here to network an existing HP Laserjet 1020 printer and a new Canon LBP5000 printer. No problems with the HP, but whatever I did I couldn't get the Canon to work in printer sharing mode - every time the Belkin software (v1.4.0) would disconnect the printer before the Canon software had finished with it, so that the Canon software went into an error state and the job was reprinted when I cleared the error. Belkin support wasn't aware of the problem and were no help at all. All in all, a promising concept inadequately executed.

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doesnt give enough power to power a usb hdd (western digital 250gb or the 160gb model) plus dabs wont let me return it, nower does it say that it wont power the hdd

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• Value for money