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Wireless USB hubs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-a-good-idea dept.

HaggiZ writes "Here is alternative to the clutter of USB cables and keys sitting on your desk. Now Belkin has announced their own wire-free USB setup. It's a wireless USB hub, allowing your to plug devices into the hub and have your PC/laptop elsewhere and not need to worry about running cables along the livingroom or study to reach. Very handy for laptop users, I can imagine some very handy uses for so HTPCs as well. Shipping in spring for a shave under $130."

7 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds good, but maybe not? by PlayCleverFully · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, yeah, it sounds great and will probably be great for lots of things.

    However, performance will drop on these items, even the fastest wireless gaming mouses have a semi-noticable lag when you use them. This lag in other items could create problems, like obfuscated code going to printers, etc.

    Also, a security issue if you live in close-quarters (apartments, office buildings) because people could sniff the "packets" between the hub and device. They could watch you on your webcam, when you have your webcam software off.

    Well, it will probably be good, the cons are not too bad, I will actually probably buy one myself.

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    1. Re:Sounds good, but maybe not? by ergo98 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      High bandwidth DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN LOW LAG!!!!

      Point to point high bandwidth almost certainly does mean low lag. In this case even if it (ridiculously) had 100,000 byte packets (which is ridiculous), that's still only 8ms "lag", or faster than 125 frames per second.

      So thanks for the bit of pragmatic wisdom, but unfortunately in this case you're being an idiot.

    2. Re:Sounds good, but maybe not? by Persol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is negligible transmission latency

      And you know that how? It's not just the aount of time the radio waves take. It's also the encoding and decoding. Theoretically they could have a 1 second buffer in there, giving you a second of lag. (Not that they would)

      The point is, there will be extra lag introduced because of this... and none of us can say how much unless we know exactly how this thing works.

  2. Re:Bluetooth by EvilMonkeySlayer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a PVR, the Humax 9200T. It allows me to record etc from digital tv/radio.
    I can transfer those recordings from it to a pc via a USB connection, unfortunately whenever I want to transfer those it means connecting my laptop upto it. Because of the PVR's location in a cabinet it is a bit of hassle.

    With a wireless usb adapter it essentially means I can transfer those recordings to my laptop/desktop pc with the minimum of hassle.

    Not everything uses or supports bluetooth.

  3. Not the wire to the hub by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know how useful this will be to me. Its not the wire, one, running to the usb hub, but the wires, four, running from the hub to the devices. Now if I could just plug in a wireless dongle to each device that would be cool.

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  4. Re:Bluetooth by MBCook · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (which is on Macs, I don't know about other computers) is 3.0 Mbps. Faster, but still not there.

    But like the grandparent post said, the real point is that most things aren't available in Bluetooth. You want to plug in your external hard drive by Bluetooth? You can't buy one that would let you do that. Is your digital camera designed to use Bluetooth to connect to your computer? Your drawing tablet? Your PDA? Your cell phone? Your printer? Your DVD-RW drive?

    Some of these things may be available in Bluetooth, but if they were and if your computer supported Bluetooth you probably would be using it already. This is a solution for things that must be USB (or you don't want to fork out to buy the Bluetooth version), and I can see it being quite handy. It would be nice to have a little collection of USB stuff that I could plug into my laptop with one little adapter so I'm still cordless instead of the wire running over to the hub. And with a HTPC (as someone else mentioned) you could use this to plug USB stuff in by the couch where you are (game pads, memory sticks, etc) instead of having to reach behind your collection of AV equiptment where the PC is.

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  5. All comes down to compatibility by eberta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have seen attempts to do this before and even bought one (albeit it was just point-to-point and designed specifically for printers). I would not buy it until some independent testing was done it (Tom's hardware style). Basically my HP printer would work for a week or two and then it would just return with communication error until I power cycled everything. I remember a movement to make an official WUSB (wireless USB) protocol, but it did not seem to go anywhere. If Belkin finally made a version that actually works on most hardware without glitches, hurray to them. It is a very difficult task because of the way USB works.