Plugable’s New 10-Port USB 2.0 Hub

Posted on 01. Nov, 2010 by in Windows

A lot of USB hubs end up looking like a porcupine on your desk – wires going in all directions.

So we’re excited to launch a hub with a lots of expandability (10 ports), but with a simple and clean design.

  • Full USB 2.0/1.1 performance and compatibility. No compromises. Works on all platforms with no drivers (i.e. it’s a standard USB 2.0 hub)
  • Cascaded Terminus Technology chipsets – the best designed, lowest power, most reliable USB 2.0 hub controller out there right now
  • The 10 ports (plus upstream port to PC and AC power) are all on just two sides of the hub, minimizing cable clutter
  • Two of the ports swivel to a vertical position – so if you want a flash drive or antenna to stick up, that works. If you want everything to lay flat so you can stack on the hub, no problem
  • A blue LED bar down the center of the device signals power. 2.5A AC adapter included

The customer feedback from this hub design has been surprising us – you wouldn’t think in 2010 that a USB 2.0 hub could get people excited. But buyers have written with disproportionately positive feedback like “Easy to use and a really helpful device” and “Exactly what I was looking for”.

With many laptops only having 2 or 3 USB ports, the easy expandability of a hub like this is a nice win.

Check out more pics and details on the Amazon product page

Plugable USB 2.0 10 Port Hub (with Power Adapter) Product Details $26.95

How Well Does the New MacBook Air Work with DisplayLink?

Posted on 20. Oct, 2010 by in UGA-2K-A

DisplayLink USB 2.0 graphics adapters are the easiest way to get multiple monitors attached to a laptop, especially one with limited connectivity. USB is ubiquitous, and you can always add an inexpensive USB hub to get more ports.

But compatibility with the Mac has been hit-and-miss. Mac OS has no special support for USB graphics – so DisplayLink’s drivers have to do quite a bit of work to integrate with the OS. And Apple’s new OS updates and platforms have sometimes broken the drivers, requiring another update from DisplayLink to set things right.

In particular, in the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models introduced in 2010, Apple added hybrid switching Intel/nVidia graphics for power management purposes. The OS switches between them depending on whether lower power (Intel) or higher 3D performance (nVidia GeForce GT 330M) is called for. Unfortunately, that switching conflicts with USB graphics in Mac OS X in significant ways that DisplayLink has been unable to solve. As a workaround, users with these MacBooks can turn off graphics switching in the control panel.

On the bright side, with the 13″ MacBook Pro, Apple moved entirely to using nVidia’s latest low-power chipset, the GeForce 320M, which both is 1) an all-in-one non-switching solution and 2) makes use of integrated memory, which is a good match for USB graphics. This MacBook Pro doesn’t have the compatibility problems of the 15″ and 17″ versions.

The new MacBook Air, announced today, now too is potentially a great match for USB graphics – a small and light notebook for travel, but with the ability to connect many devices and up to 4 independent displays (one USB graphics adapter per display), all via inexpensive USB 2.0 hubs to expand beyond the two built-in ports.

But what about compatibility?

Fortunately, Apple has announced that the new MacBook Air uses the same nVidia GeForce 320M graphics solution as the MacBook Pro 13″ model, so the compatibility story should be the same. Just make sure to use DisplayLink’s latest 1.6 beta 3 drivers or newer, for full 64-bit OS support and the latest fixes.

This is based solely on the specs for now – hopefully we’ll get a newly minted Macbook Air owner to post here with their experiences. And again, for Mac OS X these are beta drivers for now, so only somewhat adventurous users should jump in to experience any of this multi-monitor madness.

DisplayLink Releases New Mac Driver Beta (1.6 Beta 3)

Posted on 29. Sep, 2010 by in UGA-2K-A

DisplayLink has released an updated beta of their version 1.6 Mac drivers, available for download from their Mac forums. This is the first update in quite a few months, so it’s a good sign for Mac users.

The main feature of the new beta are fixes for some problems experienced on resume from sleep.

In terms of our general recommendations for Macs and Plugable’s DisplayLink-based products, we still want to emphasize that all Mac drivers are of a beta/pre-release level of quality compared to the Windows products. They still 1) are incompatible with recent MacBook Pros with switching graphics 2) disable the USB ethernet interface on docking stations like our Plugable dock. 3) are too frequently broken or fixed by Apple’s OS X updates — Apple often seems to be changing driver interfaces in subtle ways that affect USB graphics.

We expect and hope that support from both DisplayLink and Apple will improve in time, and we’ll be able to recommend the combination without qualification. Until then, it’s good to see releases like this for incremental progress.

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