There's two USB sockets on the pc which were for printer + scanner. Now I need one for a broadband connection as well. I expect to need another connection for a digital camera soon. Maplins have a 4 way port for £12.99 and a 5 way for £14.99. I have also seen 4 way ports for about £60.
Is there any reason not to get the one that's way cheaper:confused:

Also there seems to be powered and non powered hubs - what's that about then :)

in my limited experience, don't go for non-powered hubs! a lot of devices don't receive enough power from these hubs, and so disable themselves (webcam with me).

Might be worht looking at Dabs/Scan/PCWorld etc for USB2.0 expansion cards, Scan were doing them quite cheap a week or so ago.

Scan 5-port USB2 Card

- Jon

Hi,

I dont think there will be much difference TBH between a cheap and a dear one.
Basically each USB device that you plug into your PC needs a certain amount of power to operate.
Each USB port on your PC is rated at 500 milliwatts IIRC.
You plug your USB hub into one of the USB ports on the PC.
Now, not sure if they're all the same, but my USB hub will work unpowered OR powered. When unpowered it supplies 25mw to each of its 4 ports. (It takes power from the PC USB port) This is fine for smaller stuff like mice etc, but when I plug my Digi camera in, it doesnt work.
This is because it needs more power than the port can supply with just the power coming from the USB port on the PC.
You then need to power the actual hub, which IIRC, gives 500mw to each port instead of 25mw.

Hope you understand.
If not I'll try and explain it again!

Mark...

If you have XP then it tells you if your devices take too much power. I have HP DJ 970, Genius Scanner, Smartcard reader, wireless mouse and PS2 Joypad plugged into a non-powered hub.