USB fanboys teased with 16-port hub
Handy hardware - or example of tech art?
Do you have at least 16 USB devices you'd like to connect to your computer at the same time? Look no further: gadget retailer Brando has a USB 2.0 hub with exactly that number of input ports.
USB 2.0 being what it is, none of the devices you hook up will communicate at the bus standard's peak speed, 480Mb/s, and you'll almost certainly need to connect the hub's external power supply.
And in case your system's USB port can cope with this little lot, you can hook the hub up to a second port too.
Utterly bonkers, of course, but the fully laden hub has a certain industrial tech art charm:
Whatever you buy it for, it'll cost you $72 (£45). ®
COMMENTS
USB RAID
It's for making a 16 drive RAID from USB memory sticks of course.
This bugs me.
When USB was first mooted, it was asked "why not make it daisy-chainable?"
The USB consortium said that they'd designed it to make the hub so simple and cheap that every device would have one built in, and it would look like a daisy chain without any of the compromises to the protocols that would have been required in true daisy chain.
What was the last device you saw that was both USB device and USB hub? Medium to high-end keyboards have one, but my scanner doesn't and my printer doesn't. As desk-bound devices with independent power supplies, they're the perfect candidates. But there's more profit in selling us the hubs separately. Joy.
A title containing letters and/or digits
There's a certain amount of geek appeal in that picture but I think what we all want to know is...
What does the big red perspex-protected button do?! World domination? Missile launcher?
How about 24...
24 port hub here...
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/e5be/
