Belkin Hub and Media Reader
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It is 12x6.5x1.5cm and weights around 150grams with supplied USB lead attached. There is a power adapter supplied but in my tests it was never required.
The base has four tiny rubber feet to avoid slippage, both the sides are bare with the back having inputs for the mini USB lead and power adapter as well as outputs for two USB ports. The front has another USB output on the right side with the rest having the connectors over 4.5 ports for the 15 media cards.
There are five LED's let into a black line along the top of the device a red one on the left to show that it is attached to a PC and four green ones that flash when data is being read or written to a card.
The top left opening is the '1.5 ports' as what would have been a standard fitting for Smart Media cards has been widened at one end to allow support for the coming of XD cards. The top right supports MMC and SD as well as miniSD and RSMMC. The lower level has six flavours of Memory Stick on the left and the three flavours or Compact Flash (I,II and MicroDrive) on the right.
Normally a CD is supplied with these type of devices to provide support for Windows 98 users as ME and XP have native support and indeed the unit was automatically recognised by both Windows XP machines I tested it on. The first displayed 13 tray messages before it decided it was happy and the second 4. On both systems four additional drive letters were displayed in My Computer for the card connectors. An extra letter was added for each of the three USB ports as something was attached.
However the driver has some purpose even for ME and XP users as it adds an icon in My Computer when a card is inserted. So rather than you having to remember which drive letter applies to say your SD card an icon appears above the drive letter saying SD/MMC. In the past I have seen this on rare occasions in a few products but it never seemed consistent. During my tests as soon as a card is inserted the standard Windows icon is replaced by one relevant to the card.
Also on the CD is a copy of Ulead Picture Show2 to help in managing digital images however they arrive on the PC or a device attached to it. There is also the ubiquitous PDF file but for most this will be a duplication as 20 pages of the four language manual are in English.
This USB device (works okay with USB 1.1 but data transfer is of course a lot slower) is small and neat, technically it only gives two extra USB ports as it takes one itself but as you could fit a standalone card reader into a USB port I will still say three USB ports. I have never heard of the two additional card types claimed by Sitecom so maybe they are types that do not exist in the wild or just possibly this Belkin unit would support them as well. What should be important to any user is does it support your card type or types and does it support them in separate slots. www.pcworld.co.uk have this Belkin item F5U271UKUC for £49.99
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