Perfectly fine printer cable

Not a lot you can write about a printer cable. Belkin are the masters of covering their packaging with claims of gold contacts and superb transfer speeds, to be honest I haven't the time or the inclination to test these claims. All I can say is, I attached it to my computer, then to the printer and printed a test page, which came off fine and I've been using it ever since.

The build quality is nice too, a good cable all round.

Not much to say...

This is a lead, with 2 ends... one plugs into the USB port, and the other takes whatever USB device you would otherwise have plugged into the port.
The only gripe I have about this is the HUGE amount of packaging it arrived in!!! It would have fitted into a normal sized padded envelope, but it arrived in a box which was (at a guess) half a metre wide & high, and even longer!! This meant it didn't fit in my letterbox, so someone had to be there to collect it. This was madness!!
I don't know whether it always comes from the same supplier though - so maybe others will package it more sensibly.

Works perfectly

Bought one of these despite all the bad reviews and my gamble paid off. Bearing in mind other peoples installation hassles i firstly installed it using the supplied software and unsurprisingly it didn't work. So i simply set it up using Windows wireless network wizard-inputting the required information manually and it immediatly worked perfectly. i think thats the problem most people are having- that they didn't let Windows recognise the new hardware properly before they gave up. Absolutely nothing wrong with this piece of kit!!

very poor Belkin

I am a very knowledgeable PC user and this piece of equipment is useless to me.
It doesn't work very well at all with the Mobile phone software for my Nokia N95, Sony-Ericsson W580i or my LG Viewty. It may work with others but no joy at all with my phones therefore a useless piece of plastic to me. My old BT Dongle worked perfectly with them (sadly lost in house move)Getting returned as I type.
Disappointing Belkin :(

Beware

Bewrae
This cable only supports USB 1.1 and was less efficient with my portable USB 2.0 hard drive - had to use the power supply with the hard drive to get the cable to work with it

good item

i bought two of these to get free super saver delivery. they are great and do the job wel, i love them.

two fairly small cables came in a box bigger than a shoe box, it should have fitted through my door but i had to go out my way to go to the post office and collect it as it didnt fit through my door.

good item bad packaging.

Stay clear & buy something else!

I had no idea how fast and reliable my broadband connection was until this piece of rubbish one day decided to die on me. I persevered with this unstable, unreliable piece of kit for 6 months, Tried everything: having firstly with Belkins own software (waste of memory and useless), then uninstalling the software and used just the drivers, both with and without the adaptor (which appears to have no effect whatsoever).
Slight improvement once I'd uninstalled the Belkin software, but I just got so frustrated how one minute I'd have 'excellent' then the next 'poor', or anything inbetween. Even when the connection appears to be excellent, it can be so slowwww.
As I'd spent £30 on it (at the time) I stuck with it although almost throwing it out the window on several occasions!

Last week, it decided to throw in the towl altogether and I'm now SO glad it did. My friend gave me a Netgear WG111v2 adaptoe (only 54Mb/s) and it flys by in comparison. Now I have stable, fast connection. Just wish I'd thrown the Belkin in the bin months ago!!

Belkin USB Printer Cable

Belkin Gold Series Cable 1.8m
Well it's a cable that connectors your printer to your PC! Arrived in less than a week and works like you'd expect. Priced at under £3.00 - that's all it's worth. I don't know how retailers that sell this cable for any more can sleep at night!

A Word of Warning

The reader works well up to a point. That point is 1Gb. It cannot cope with cards greater than 1Gb which is a shame because the cards I use these days are 2Gb.

If you search on Belkins support page the only answer it has is that it doesn’t support >1Gb but they will bring out a future product that will.

For me this was a waste of money.

plug and play

Connected my PS2 mouse & keyboard (from my PC) to my W2K laptop with this, worked straight away, great product.

Up and running in minutes

I was running out of USB slots on the back of my iMac and this little device solved the problem in minutes. Literally plug and play. Included in the pack is a USB lead to connect the hub to your computer and a power adaptor. There's a slot on the top to re-charge your iPod shuffle (the picture looks like the older model of Shuffle). It is very light-weight and could get knocked off a desk-top, but that's a minor minus point. It looks stylish and co-ordinates with Mac computers.

Does the job

This hub is just what i needed. I've got a laptop with a single 1.1 USB port. Which sucks because every time i wanted to use any peripheral device (printer, scanner, floppy disk etc) i had to unplug my mouse and use the rubbish touch mouse on the laptop. This situation was very annoying. Yet most other hubs require a 2.0 USB port in your computer, which i did not have.
This is the only hub i could find which had more than 4 ports and which would run through my single 1.1 port. The hub came a day before it was scheduled to, which was nice and has one beast of a power adaptor. It really needs to be plugged in to the wall as it can overload otherwise.
The only problem which i can think of is that it is not a 2.0 hub and therefore will not run 2.0 USB devices very well (a bit slower). Although this is the same for any 1.1 USB port no matter if its in a hub or a P.C.
The hub itself is very easy to install, just plug it in with all your devices attached and then wait for windows (XP) to recognise all of them.
Overall, very good and very useful.

Easy peasy

I had my doubts as to whether or not to order this as it dosn't make it clear that this is a mains power device which was what I wanted.
I plugged it in it connected straight away,it has a nice solid feel the 4 grn LCDs only illuminate when in use so its easy to see if your periferals are connected. I have always found Belkin good.

Easy setup, reliable operation, fast connection

I have had one of these working with connection to a router for about a month now. It connects at about 270Mbps through walls and ceilings, and currently to a not very well positioned router - it is in the corner of a room, about 2.5 - 3m below the height of the adapter, and normally this can cause problems, but I have had none. Set-up was also very easy.

VERY POOR after sales service

The UPS does do an excellent job, but the reason why I have given it only a 1 star rating (would have preferred to give 0) is to warn buyers of Belkin's fraudulent attitude.
The product has a 3 year warranty, and if it fails within that period, Belkin will replace it. What they DO NOT tell you is that, at the end of the 3 year period from the original purchase date, is that the replacement unit is no longer under warranty, and your connected equipment is no longer protected.
My first one failed in 30 months, as did the replacement unit. So if it fails within the 3 year period , you better buy a new one instead of getting Belkin to replace it

Super Connectivity

Excellent quality cable with low distortion. my usb devices seem to work slightly quicker with the gold leads. Look great too!

Nice, but no prize... (yet).

When I first read about this device I thought what a great idea and bought one as soon as it was available and while still being pleased that that I did, it wasn't all plain sailing...

If you want a clever print server with the ability to share 'slow' USB devices over a small network, then it's right on the money. However, if you're after something to share 'fast' devices then you'll either be out of luck or you'll find your devices slowed to about a tenth of their speed. To be fair, Belkin do state in their adverts that"Data-transfer rates do not support some high-speed/high-bandwidth USB devices such as HD-streaming webcams or other video-transfer applications", but then they also go on to say that the device has 5 x USB 2.0 hubs and to talk about using external hard disks with it. Technically they are correct, you can plug in USB 2.0 devices such as external hard drives but don't expect USB 2.0 performance via this hub.

On the plus side, the hub is very small and neat measuring about 6½ inches square by about ½ an inch tall and has a tiny green power LED on the front. If you have a Belkin N1 router or their Mac mini hub then they'll stack nicely on top. Setting up the software is relatively easy, although when I ran the setup routine I was not offered any way to change the IP address of the device so if you don't have DHCP on your network things will be a lot more tricky. (You can change the device from a dynamic to a static IP address via it's browser interface - if you can find the password)! That aside, once I had the software installed on both an XP and a Vista PC, I set about connecting my Canon ip4000 printer. For the Vista machine that had previously had the printer physically installed on a USB port there was nothing else to do, the printer connected straight away via the hub and I was able to use it. Installing the printer on the XP machine was slightly more tricky as the Canon printer driver installer could not autodetect the printer even though I'd disconnected it from the Vista machine so that it was 'free' to be used. There's an easy workaround which is to just manually choose any other port for the driver install routine, then go to the printer properties and change the port to the USB one listed. Subsequently sharing the printer between the two PCs was a doddle and all the advanced features of the printer (duplex, CD printing, etc.) worked flawlessly with the Canon software. Plugging in and sharing a 2Gb Buffalo USB stick was just as easy and the software lets you easily switch between which PC is using any given device. Basically the device is 'tied' to one machine and another user has to 'request' it, whereupon a message pops up on the PC that's already using it asking if it's ok to switch the connection. So you don't get multiple concurrent connections to your shared devices but it's still perfectly workable for a small home network or perhaps even an office of half a dozen or so people.

The first minus point is performance. Yes Belkin state this device supports USB 2.0 but that's more a statement of compatibility rather than an indication of performance. I used a freeware utility (HD Tune) to measure performance and found that my 2Gb Buffalo 'Firestick' managed an average transfer rate of about 24MB/sec when connected directly to the PC. However, when connected via the Belkin Network USB Hub that rate dropped to around 2.8MB/sec. It was the same story with a Freecom 500Gb external USB drive that could manage 30MB/sec on a direct connection but only 2.9MB/sec connected via the hub. Certainly the wired 10/100 ethernet connection between the PC, the router and the hub wasn't the bottleneck so it had to be down to the Belkin hub itself, either their drivers or just an issue with the firmware/hardware. Sure Belkin do say you might have issues with things like HD streaming webcams and video transfer applications, but that's putting it mildly - don't be surprised if all you get is 10% of the throughput you'd normally expect on mass storage devices.

The second issue was with my Freecom DVB-T Freeview USB stick - it just flatly refused to work when connected via the Belkin Hub. In this case I suspect it's not the speed of the device rather it's the amount of power it has to draw from a USB socket. The USB standard indicates that a port can provide up to 500mA and the Freecom DVB-T needs all of that to get going. Plugging it directly into the PC it worked fine, but via the Belkin hub it wasn't even recognised. This really highlights the fact that you need to check carefully if the device you're planning to use via the hub will actually work, in which case an understanding supplier who'll take the hub back if your devices don't work, is a bonus. For me I'm happy to just not share my Freeview device. There was a similar problem with a bus-powered Wester Digital 120Gb USB hard drive that I use for backing up my laptop, but to be fair to Belkin, when I plugged that in to the hub a warning popped up stating that it was drawing too much power and I should unplug it. I duly unplugged it but was then dogged by repeated messages stating"USB Over Current Warning. A USB device is currently drawing too much power. Please remove it from the Network USB Hub". At that point there was NOTHING plugged in to the hub but still it kept complaining! Powering the hub off then back on again finally cleared the message.

Another irritation is that devices default to having to be 'safely' removed when connected to the hub. That means that when my printer goes into power-saving mode after 30 minutes, a message pops up saying"Canon ip4000 printer was not safely removed". Likewise if you just remove a USB memory stick you'll get a similar warning. It would be nice if you could configure a 'quick removal' policy in the Belkin software itself, but there isn't that option, and even if you find your hub-connected USB device in the Windows Device Manager and configure it for 'quick removal', the Belkin software will ignore the Windows setting and will still warn you that the device wasn't safely removed... grrr!

One final thing and that is that Belkin do say that this device won't work through a VPN, but in the case of the AT&T VPN client, it won't even work alongside it. So any thoughts of using my work laptop with the Belkin hub were soon dismissed. I assumed that so long as the VPN wasn't running on the laptop, everything should work fine but this wasn't the case. Not only did the Belkin software not see my shared USB devices while the VPN connection was disabled, if I had my VPN connection running and then loaded the Belkin Control Centre software (just to see what happened), the VPN connection would crash! Uninstalling the Belkin Control Centre software from the laptop got things back to normal but it's a pain that I can't access hub connected devices like my printer from the laptop.

To sum up my experiences with it, the devices that did work were my Canon ip4000 printer, a Canon Powershot S50 camera and my ageing Orange SPV C500 smartphone. My Buffalo 2Gb and 4Gb USB sticks plus my (AC powered) Freecom 500Gb external drive also worked ok although at greatly reduced performance. On the other hand, my Freecom DVB-T USB stick and WD 120Gb drive (both USB powered devices) just wouldn't work.

If Belkin sort out the performance issues and work on the bugs in the software then they'll have a winner, but for now I'd be cautious. If you're prepared to work at it with the software, don't mind the sluggish performance and are confident your USB devices will work then go for it, otherwise wait and see. Perhaps users will start compiling a central list of what devices do and don't work... any volunteers? =;o)