Belkin F5U220

These days almost all computer accessories connect through USB ports. After installing a printer, UPS, USB mouse, image scanner and external hard drive, a couple of years ago I ran out of USB ports to conveniently connect my USB flash drives, GPS and digital cameras to. At first I connected a cheap Chinese 4-port USB 2.0 hub which sort-of worked OK though untidy. It was pretty flakey with some of the things I plugged into it. After replacing my failing hard drive and reinstalling XP SP2, it refused to work at all, and I gave it to a friend. Then I installed a cheap Chinese 5-port USB 2.0 PCI card which worked, sort-of. It was flakey like the hub, e.g. transfers from one of my flash drives would stall half way through. It was based on a VIA chip. Some net searching revealed that problems are routine with PCI USB cards which use VIA brand chips. Finally after reading many excellent reviews of the Belkin F5U220 card (which uses an NEC chip), I bought and installed one. Unfortunately that was followed by the PC regularly completely freezing, requiring me to hit the reset button. Eventually I removed the card and its drivers and made certain that XP didn't know about it, then restarted the PC. Then I completely powered it down, cleaned the Belkin card's edge connector, reinstalled it and let XP do its "Found New Hardware" routine from scratch. That was a few weeks ago, and it's been faultless ever since. I can connect any combination of USB 1 and USB 2.0 devices and it always works perfectly and at full speed. I found some XP drivers for the card on the Belkin website, but decided against installing them. As an American once told me, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!". I'd recommend this card to anyone who needs to expand their PC's USB capability.