Belkin USB 2.0 Upgrade Kit

Author : Shawn Sparks Date : 12th November 2002

...Product	USB 2.0 Upgrade Kit
...Manufacturer	Belkin
...Supplier	Belkin
...Price	$89.00

 

 

 

 

Included in the kit is a 2 port PCI card, a 4 port USB 2.0 hub and a high-quality gold plated cable. Also present in the box are two manuals, a driver CD and a power cord for the hub.

The bundle is complete, including drivers, manuals and hardware

A closer look at the front of the hub...

...And the rear, 4 ports, an output and a Power connector.

The PCI card has two avaliable USB 2.0 Ports

A high-Quality gold plated cable is also included

Installation was a breeze under Windows XP, I simply shut down the PC, install the card into an empty PCI slot and rebooted. The card was auto detected and drivers were present.

Then what's left was simply to connect the cable from the card to the hub. You are USB 2.0 ready! All cables connect to the rear of the hub which keeps wire clutter to a minimum; however it makes actively using the ports for devices that you attach and detach regularly a trifle difficult. I have extra USB ports on my Game Theater XP, so it is a moot point in my case, but something to consider if there are no easily accessible USB ports around your desk.

There are indicator lights on the front of the hub to show status. The red light shows that the hub is powered up, and the four green lights show the status of each port.

The hub uses one of the two ports on the card and offers four free ports, so with the kit are a total of five available ports. This should be plenty for any user these ports can support up to 127 devices in total, that's 254 devices if both ports on the PCI card are used. I doubt I need to assure you that there are enough possibilities. Below are some specs for USB 2.0 as compared to some other interfaces to show just how fast USB 2.0 really is. These are theoretical peak rates of course and may not be replicated in actual use.

I think that it speaks for itself; USB 2.0 is the way to go. With the fastest transfer rates, the cross-platform flexibility and the most commonly used interface, not to mention backwards compatibility with USB 1.1 devices, USB 2.0 leads the race for a standard interface. Belkin offers a simple solution for upgrading currently out of date systems to full USB 2.0 compatibility with a very complete package. Once again, I cannot find any reason not to recommend a Belkin solution.

Pros:
Complete solution for upgrading
Ungodly transfer rates, faster than FireWire
Installed without a hitch
Very high quality parts with Lifetime Warranty

Cons:
$89.00 feels expensive
Ports on rear of hub may be hard to access
Power supply is a bit bulky

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