Because of that, it’s nice to be able to throw a small USB hub in your bag for extra connectivity when you’re travelling. You want a durable hub without any parts sticking out that are easy to break. Where the hub is a single integrated unit, so nothing will get disconnected and lost. With ports that are in line with the cable, so cables aren’t running all directions on your desk when you’re using it. And a hub without so many ports that it needs its own power adapter anyway (which would be too bulky).

It’s for these kinds of needs that we’re targeting our simple new USB 2.0 2-Port Hub.

It features a clean, compact design. With a standard USB 2.0 High Speed hub controller inside (NEC/Renesas µPD720114 2-port), it enables two devices to share a single available USB port with full USB 2.0 compatibility and performance.

Because it’s bus powered, the 2 ports share the available 500 mA from the single upstream port. It’s a perfect match for use with low powered devices such as keyboards and mice or self powered devices like printers, powered hubs, and powered external hard drives. Note, though, that you won’t want to use an unpowered hub like this for charging.

Features

• Standard 2 Port USB 2.0 compliant USB hub controller chipset
• Compatible with all USB 2.0 and 1.1 devices
• Supports full data rates of 1.5/12/480 Mbps
• USB bus powered
• Compact, in-line design to minimize cable clutter

Have any questions? Email support@plugable.com anytime – we’ll be happy to help.

Where to Buy

Plugable USB 2.0 2 Port Hub

Product Details

$9.20

• It’s shocking to see a keyboard projected onto any table, and be able to type in thin air (that was also true of its predecessor, the Celluon LaserKey CL850)
• You can connect to any PC or mobile with either with USB or Bluetooth. It uses a battery in wireless mode. That battery charges via its included USB cable
• It now has a mouse mode with multi-touch support for Windows 7 (Doesn’t support Mac or iOS multitouch)

But the really important thing about the new Magic Cube is it’s now driverless: It uses the standard Bluetooth HID profile and standard USB HID class, so for whatever you connect it to, it just sees a standard USB keyboard or mouse (which have always used HID). No drivers, no fuss.

That makes the new Magic Cube work with nearly all devices out there that can use a standard Bluetooth or USB keyboard: iPad, iPod, iPhone, Windows, Mac, Linux, and lots of other mobiles and devices.

iOS devices, in particular, are well-matched because the built-in auto-correct is a great help for improving accuracy (which is the main remaining downside of a projection keyboard — it takes getting used to).

If you’ve never had the chance to try a laser keyboard, take a look at this video to see it in action.

Celluon Magic Cube Laser Projection Keyboard and Touchpad

Product Details

$169.99

Simply order any of our offered Plugable products on Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon will dispatch the product from their UK warehouse to your destination quickly, and with perks like FREE Super Saver Delivery on eligible items.

We’re really excited about this, as it allows a much wider audience access to great products like our USB graphics adapters for adding up to 6 monitors to a system, our USB gigabit ethernet adapters for upgrading wifi or 10/100 only laptops and tablets, and more.

Amazon.co.uk product sales, documentation, and support are English language only, and our ability to ship replacement units outside the UK is limited. See our EU FAQ for all the details.

And if we’re still not serving you — you’re outside the US, UK, and EU — please let us know what you’d like to see next. We’re constantly looking to expand our options.

Until then, please check out our Plugable products on Amazon.co.uk and the full line at Amazon.com.

Thanks for going out of your way for us!

There is a new generation of simple USB hardware devices, and operating system software which support them, which now enable this.

Our Plugable DC-125 Docking Station is one of these USB devices, and below we’re showing how it works in combination with Userful Multiseat Linux 2011.

Microsoft’s Windows Multipoint Server 2011 product is better known than Userful, but Userful has a significant advantage – if you’re willing to run Linux, it offers better per-client performance and scalability in terms of the number of stations supported per PCs.

Take a look at the video below to see Userful in action with a single PC and several of our Plugable DC-125 Docking Clients.

Let us know if you have any questions about how our solution works. And read and see more at our product page.

Through July 4th 2011, we’re temporarily lowering the price of our Plugable UGA-2K-A USB Graphics Adapter to $57.50 (normally $64.50).

If you know how great 2 or 3 monitors are, and have wanted to add another (up to 6 on Windows; 4 on Mac), this is a great time to do it.

More independent USB-attached displays for Independence Day. Yea!

The theoretical speed of a bus like USB is different from what devices are able to achieve in practice. USB 2.0′s theoretical max is 480Mbps, while USB 3.0 jumps that up to 4.8Gbps.

Today we’re benchmarking the Plugable USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station, which is capable of running on either USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 systems, to show what to expect in terms of performance.

While the low-level Windows drivers are different for USB 2.0 (Microsoft EHCI) and USB 3.0 (NEC/Renesas XHCI), above that layer, everything is common, using the drivers already present in Windows. This includes the existing Microsoft USB Mass Storage class driver that does much of the heavy lifting for USB-attached disks.

About the test platform:

• Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• Intel Core i3 CPU 530 @ 2.93 GHz
• 6GB RAM
• Plugable PCI Express to SuperSpeed USB 3.0 2-Port Expansion Card (NEC/Renesas Chipset)
• Provided USB 3.0 cable from the Plugable USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station with the updated 24.47 firmware.
• Western Digital Hard Drive WD1002FAEX 7200RPM SATA (1 TB)

Programs used:

• HD Tune 2.55 / 512KB Block Size
• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 64-bit / 9 Test Runs / All Tests
• ATTO Disk Benchmark / Direct I/O /  Overlapped I/O / Transfer Size: 0.5 to 8192 KB / Total Length: 256MB / Queue Depth: 4

HDTune (USB 2.0)

HDTune (USB 3.0)

CrystalDiskMark (USB 2.0)

CrystalDiskMark (USB 3.0)

ATTO Disk Benchmark (USB 2.0)

ATTO Disk Benchmark (USB 3.0)

Conclusion:

HDTune reports an Average Transfer Rate increase from 36.4MB/sec to 97.9MB/sec. This is about 168% faster than USB 2.0

CrystalDiskMark reports a sequential Read increase from 38.43MB/s to 107.6MB/s and a Write increase from 36.61MB/s to 88.75MB/s. That’s a 179.9% increase for Reading and a 149.2% increase for Writing.

ATTO Disk Benchmark reports a Read increase from 38402 to 105268 (KBytes/sec) and a Write increase from 35696 to 85762 (KBytes/sec) . Those are  174.12% increases for Reading and 140.25% increases for Writing accordingly.

Summary of Results

If we were to get the average of the 3 tests we would get an average speed increase of 162.2%. A transfer that would take about 5 minutes on USB 2.0, would complete in roughly 2 minutes on USB 3.0.

These numbers may increase slightly in the future with USB-attached SCSI support, USB 3.0 streams, and other driver/firmware updates. But 2-3 times faster in practice is a good baseline for expectations.

We welcome any comments, corrections, or your own benchmark results.

We’re really excited about this product. It has a clean, simple design. Power-sipping, so it can be powered by a standard USB 2.0 connection alone. Because it’s “just” a collection of USB 2.0 devices, it’s enormously flexible. And because of the simplicity, we’ve been able to hit the $64.95 price point, available now with next day shipping on Amazon.

The most common uses for a USB dock like the DC-125 are:

• You have a laptop, but would like to use it “like a desktop” when you’re at your desk. The DC-125 gives you quick dock/undock with a single USB cable driving an extra full-sized monitor (driven by DispayLink DL-125 chip, capable up to 1280×1024 / 1440×900), speakers, keyboard, and mouse already on your desk. The extra monitor can either mirror or extend what’s on your laptop screen.
• You want to save time, money, and power by leveraging one PC to support many users. The DC-125 is supported out of the box by Userful’s Multiseat Linux 2011™ and with available drivers on Windows Multipoint Server 2011™

If you’ve never heard of Userful or WMS2011, take a look at those links. Both require a software license (not included with the DC-125). But it’s amazing what’s possible with the enormous processing power of today’s PCs and the flexible and simple connectivity of USB 2.0 devices like this. It’s possible to realize huge cost savings with a similarly large power/environmental savings.

But most of our users will probably start with the simple benefits of laptop docking via USB. So here’s a video for a quick walkthrough of what the DC-125 offers in terms of functions:

Check out http://plugable.com/products/dc-125/ for much more detail. And if you have any questions, we’d be glad to answer them at http://support.plugable.com/

Source: DisplayLink

We’re filling out our line of DisplayLink USB graphics adapters with two new products that offer even better pricing, using DisplayLink’s most cost-effective mid-range DL-165 chip.

1) Our new UGA-165 completes our USB to VGA/DVI/HDMI family. There are all identical products other than the DisplayLink chip inside the unit: UGA-2K-A (DL-195 chip), UGA-165 (DL-165 chip), and UGA-125 (DL-125 chip).

2) Our new USB-VGA-165 is our most aggressively priced product, hitting the new price point of $44.95, while still being built on DisplayLink’s mid-range DL-165 chip. We pushed the price point down by supporting VGA connections only (no DVI or HDMI, and no extra converters needed in the box), and with simpler casing and packaging.

Now with this complete line, we’re covering the full line of DisplayLink chips, with options from $45-$65. And we hope to add a higher end option focused on HDMI in the coming months.

If you’re a current owner of one of our other DisplayLink products, you’re going to like these new adapters — same drivers, same performance, same simple setup experience, and new lower price points for connecting even more monitors to your PC!

Here’s a table with more detail to compare the four adapters head-to-head.

Model UGA-2K-A	Model UGA-165	Model UGA-125	Model USB-VGA-165
USB 2.0 to VGA, DVI, HDMI	USB 2.0 to VGA, DVI, HDMI	USB 2.0 to VGA, DVI, HDMI	USB 2.0 to VGA
DisplayLink DL-195 Chip	DisplayLink DL-165 Chip	DisplayLink DL-125 Chip	DisplayLink DL-165 Chip
Modes up to 1920×1200 or 2048×1152 (wide)	Modes up to 1600×1200 or 1920×1080 (wide)	Modes up to 1280×1024 or 1440×900 (wide)	Modes up to 1600×1200 or 1920×1080 (wide)
Power/Activity LED. Included DVI->VGA and DVI->HDMI Adapters	Power/Activity LED. Included DVI->VGA and DVI->HDMI Adapters	Power/Activity LED. Included DVI->VGA and DVI->HDMI Adapters	No LED. VGA Only. Simpler Packaging
Supported by latest DisplayLink drivers	Supported by latest DisplayLink drivers	Supported by latest DisplayLink drivers	Supported by latest DisplayLink drivers
More info …	More info …	More info …	More info …

]]> http://plugable.com/2010/12/02/plugable-adds-to-its-line-of-displaylink-usb-graphics-adapters/feed/ 2 http://plugable.com/2010/11/01/10-port-usb-20-hub/ http://plugable.com/2010/11/01/10-port-usb-20-hub/#comments Tue, 02 Nov 2010 05:06:57 +0000 Bernie Thompson http://plugable.com/?p=1544 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

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.