"BUDDY HUB" LETS YOU SHARE YOUR CONNECTIONS

Before I tell you about Ultra's new Buddy Hub, you need to know what a hub is so if you're not familiar with what a hub does, here's a quick overview.  Your computer most likely has at least two USB ports into which you can plug a variety of peripheral devices. Typically the mouse and keyboard connect via the USB hub. So when you next want to connect your USB printer for example, now what do you do since you're now out of USB ports? You buy a USB hub.

A good analogy is the common electrical outlet. Typically there are two of them on the one wall plate. So what do you do when you need to plug in more than two items? You buy one of those multi-plug devices that gives you three extra plugs or you take it to the next level and buy a power strip that typically gives you six extra plugs. A USB hub is kind of like these items. Hubs typically offer four or seven USB ports. You plug the hub into one of your computer's available ports and in turn you get several more.

Simple hubs come in non-powered and powered versions. The non-powered hub gets its power from the computer into which it's plugged so you don't have to worry about having to find a power outlet to plug it in. The down side is that the USB circuit within your computer has only a small amount of power it can distribute so you can only run USB devices that have very small power requirements. You'll more than likely find that you can't run more than one or two additional USB devices on a non-powered hub.

A powered USB hub requires AC power but you won't have to worry about how much power the USB device draws or the number of peripherals you can have plugged in all at once. My advice is to use a powered hub whenever possible.

Until recently USB hubs worked with only one computer so if you wanted to share the same device with another computer, you had to physically disconnect and reconnect the USB cord. But the new Buddy Hub from Ultra lets you share your USB devices with another directly connected computer.

The Buddy Hub is a clever little device that has two computer USB connections located at the back. Just connect a computer to the Buddy Hub's A port and the other computer to the B port. The front of the Buddy Hub sports seven USB ports into which you can connect any USB device such as printers, scanners and digital cameras.

Each USB port has a corresponding button marked A and B located directly above it. Pressing the two-position button causes it to toggle between the A or B port at the back of the hub. A red and green LED indicator on each button lights to clearly indicate which port is selected at that moment, red being for A and green for B.

Using the Buddy Hub is pretty simple. You can direct any attached device to either connected computer by just simply pressing the switching button at any given moment. The Buddy Hub is completely hot swappable which means you can press the selector buttons even while the computers and peripherals are turned on. This arrangement lets you individually control each device and direct its connectivity to either of the connected computers at any given moment.

The Buddy Hub is USB 2.0 compliant, works with both Windows and Macintosh and sells for $39.99.

www.ultraproducts.com

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