I recently acquired a small desk in our spare room on which to write. I had been using the dining room table after I abandoned the office in my workshop – for a number of reasons. My primary tool is, of course, my computer. I use a laptop. To this I connect a mouse, a printer, and an external hard drive. These are permanent residents. I also have another external hard drive, several flash drives, and a camera that are connected as needed. All of these use USB cables to connect. My laptop has 3 USB ports.
Two of these are on the right hand side, about midway back, the third is on the left near the back corner where the power connector is.
Not only do I not have enough ports for everything, but the two on the right side seriously mess up the area I use to run my mouse. I tend to lay my arm across those two cables, pulling them down and causing the connection to flicker. I was afraid if that continued I might crack the mother board. There has to be a better way.
To me, the ideal solution would have been to have more USB ports, most of them on the back edge of the lap-top. But that is not how things are. I wondered about these USB port expander things called a “hub”. I e-mailed my friend Electro-Man and asked for info on types and capabilities and what would be best for my situation.
What Kind of USB HUB?
There are two types of USB hubs: powered and unpowered. The powered hub includes a power brick that plugs into a wall socket and provides all of the USB ports on the hub with power. This is best if you want a hub with many ports or if your hub will power or charge several devices. An unpowered hub draws all the current it will use from the USB port it plugs into. This is a less cumbersome way to go if most of what plugs into it has its own power supply. Plugging too many power-hungry devices (recharging your phone, a camera, hard drive, etc) into an unpowered USB hub will result in voltage loss (from splitting it too many ways) and may damage your mother board (trying to suck more juice out of her than she can give).
In my case, my 1TB back-up drive has its own power supply. So does the printer. The mouse uses minimal power. I’d like to plug in my camera cord also, to make transfers and charging quick and easy, but that is just an occasional use thing. A 4 port unpowered hub should be sufficient for me. If I plug the hub into the port on the left-rear and store it behind the laptop, that will clear away almost all the clutter and leave the two ports on the right open for those occasional, short term uses.
This is what I bought: an Anker, 4-Port ultra-slim USB 3.0 data hub. I paid about $10.00 for it at Amazon. What I like about it is that it is quite compact, has a short cable (I don’t need or want another long cable to deal with) and it is USB 3.0 capable, so it will handle the newer, high speed drives. Of course, since I will be plugging it into a 2.0 port, that capability will not be used right now.
With the USB hub installed and my accessories plugged in, we’re ready for a live test. Will data intended for the hard drive go to the hard drive? Will data intended for the printer print out? I began testing each component individually and then in conjunction. Even with my camera plugged in and charging, the mouse works fine and data intended for the hard drive got there even if I was printing a document. I’m happy.
The end result is a desk that is not cluttered by cables. I can run the mouse around to my heart’s content and it does not trip over printer and HD cables. I have two open ports for those connect-it-when-I-need-it things. And I do not have to contend with another power brick in the surge-protector power strip under my desk.
The pig-tail on the left is my camera cord which I leave exposed and ready because I use that briefly several times each day.
It’s all very handy, and all very clean. I’m happy to be rid of the cable clutter, it didn’t cost much, and hasn’t added any difficulties to achieve it. I count that as a win all-around.
