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Hi everyone, Hope all is well. Unfortunately, I am in a bit of a situation here. See, I want to get me a USB hub for my mid 2010 iMac. However, I don't know whether to get an unpowered USB hub or a powered one. If I did get one, I would be using it for plugging in a USB flash drive, an external hard drive, my lexmark printer/scanner and my mouse. I have been looking in particular at a Targus 7 port powered USB hub. So with that, the question I am asking, is should I go for a powered USB hub or should I go for an unpowered one? Please reply as soon as possible, Adiman423 |
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for 4 ports or less, unpowered should work fine but 7+ ports, go with a powered hub. The reason for this is if you want to do something like connect multiple flash drives, or if you want to use multiple webcams as a security camera system (eg, 15 foot USB cable leading to the USB hub, then a 10 foot extension cable for each webcam It all ultimately depends on what you plan to run. if it is lots of random low powered items then unpowered is generally okay but higher powered items are. One benefit of a powered hub, is you can use it as a charger for smartphones and various other devices with out having to have your computer on. Even with a powered hub you may not be able to do something like run multiple 2.5 inch USB powered external hard drives as many of the powered hubs will have a power adapter with an output of 5V and 1 amp |
