D-Link DUB-H7 High Speed USB 2.0 7-Port Hub
by DLite Press
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of D-Link DUB-H7 High Speed USB 2.0 7-Port Hub
Customer Review: A solid performer
Summary: 5 Stars
You'd be amazed at how many things can go wrong with a USB 2.0 hub. Happily, none of those nasty things happen with this D-Link hub.
Plug it in to the USB port of the computer, plug the power into a 110 v AC outlet and you are good to go with 7 USB 2.0 devices. (It will handle USB 1.x, but remember that a slow device will slow everything else down. That's the nature of USB, not a problem with the product. This is a hub, not an intelligent switch.)
The USB hub itself is relatively small, which is nice. Some manufacturers make these things way bigger than they need to be. This one is compact, but has good clearance between each of the seven USB connecters. By the way, all the connectors are on one side, which is much to be preferred to those units where the USB ports are spread out on two or three sides, which simply adds to cable clutter.
Construction is as solid as it can be for a mass produced unit of this type and price.
The supplied USB cable is about 6 feet long.
My only criticism is that the power adapter is as relatively large wall wart kind and takes up too much space on a power bar. Unfortunately that's the way it is with most manufacturers of this kind of product.
On the whole, a well designed, well constructed product at a fair price.
Jerry
Customer Review: Works great!
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm now using the D-Link hub with (7) external devices: (2) HP laser printers, a Canon ink jet, a Canon dye transfer, a 250 GB Seagate drive, a 1TB Verbatim drive and a OWC DVD/CD burner. All work fine together. I can transfer files between the two hard drives, or burn a CD at 32X speed with the source file on one of my external HDs, and it all works.
However, all of the external devices are "self-powered" so they do not tax the D-Link power supply, and all are USB 2.0 devices. I have no idea if this would work if a USB 1.0 or 1.1 device was added to the mix, but I doubt it.
This is the most trouble free USB hub I've ever used. I've owned one for (3) years with no problems and just purchased a second D-Link hub.
The only "strange" thing that ever happened with this hub was that once I had a short power drop out that powered down the hub, but not my computer or my external HDs (which were on a UPS) which were connected through the hub. One of the ports on the hub stopped working and the green LED next to the USB socket for that port went out. All the other ports worked fine. Powering down the hub did not repair the "bad" port, but disconnecting all connections and then powering it down for a few minutes did get the hub working again, and it's been fine ever since.
Customer Review: Toughness over feature
Summary: 3 Stars
Having owned 2 of these units for more than 2 years now, I am finally ready to review this. My config link two of the same hubs.
Pros:
1.) Very cool looking hub.
2.) No overheats, no matter how many devices of different types are doing transfers. I have done as much as 5 usb thumbdrives full transfers at once before.
3.) Great for devices that doesn't require high speed: scanners, security dongle keys, controllers.
4.) One very tough hub. In the past I have had hubs that occasionally act up with out of control lights etc. This one is consistently in the same mood every day.
5.) Very light.
Cons:
1.) When any usb 1.0 device is plugged into the hub, it runs everything at usb 1.0 speed. Doesn't matter the order.
2.) Even when 2 usb hubs are connected to one another, the speed of both hubs will drop as soon as something usb 1.0 is plugged in. Doesn't matter which port on which hub.
3.) Even when running at usb 2.0 speed, it cannot match regular usb 2.0 data transfer speed of you plugging a device directly into the motherboard ports.
4.) For some reason western digital Mybook storage devices really struggle with this hub. It maybe just my storage device?
Customer Review: Works fine
Summary: 4 Stars
Somebody here complained that this was in fact a 6-port hub. Not true. There is an 8th port (type B) at the back where you can use to connect to your PC. Somebody also suggested this wouldn't work with mixed USB 1.1/2.0 devices (will fall back to 1.1). Well, I have my USB2.0 Hard Drive connected along side my USB1.1 mouse and keyboard and verified that I still got a USB2.0 speed to the HD. However, the manual does state that connecting USB 1.1 devices to the hub "may" cause all USB devices to work at USB 1.1 speed. So, I guess there are USB1.1 devices out there that can cause that to happen and DLINK just doesn't want this to be their problem. Generally, USB2.0 hubs should support concurrent USB1.1 and 2.0.
I don't like that the power adapter does not support worldwide voltages. This limits its portability for people who travel outside the US.
Updated Feb 2009. The hub stopped working in less than a year. I brought this initially to work with a TV tuner USB stick but it didn't work out well. It wasn't sure if it's the TV tuner problem (Kworld) or the hub problem. I ended up having to connect the TV tuner directly to my laptop. Oh well, I threw it away and bought a non-powered usb hub instead. Enough with powered USB hubs.
Customer Review: 7-port fails, 4-port by same manufacturer works.
Summary: 1 Stars
I am an amateur astrophotographer since 1994, ham radio operator since 1957, software engineer since 1965 so I know astronomy electronics and software pretty well. I performed MANY tests where I needed to download images from a Canon EOS RebelXT camera. The D-Link 4-port hub that I have works fine. The D-Link 7-port hub that I bought does not properly allow download of the images from the camera. Instead of the full-frame images I get when downloading via the 4-port hub, I get a tiny 20x20 pixel image when using the 7-port hub. Tested this many times with different image download packages (CCDSoft, MaximDL.) Always the same results. The 4-port hub worked and the 7-port hub didn't. I then tried a competitor, the Aluratek 7-port hub. It was even worse. I could not connect to the camera at all. Tried these using both a desktop computer and a notebook computer. Same results.
I am thinking that the electronics for all the 7-port hubs come from the same source and they don't have it right yet?
I solved my problem (I needed 5 ports) by daisy-chaining a 4-port D-Link hub to a 4-port Gigaware hub. The 4-port hubs work fine. Camera images download fine even when the camera is plugged into a port of the second daisy-chained hub.