Monoprice server hubs

[Crow550]

Anyone use any of these?

Are they a good deal & work well?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10521#1052106 A few are listed under printer hubs.

PID (Product ID): 7527 was on sale for $28.89. So it seemed like a good deal?

Anyways I want to network a printer & a USB hard drive or two. Got good reviews. Will post mine when I get around to setting it up.

 

[Monoprice_01]

Hello Crow,

As people purchase them, more reviews should come up. But they seem to be getting positive results. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me a PM or respond in this thread. Thanks!

John Lingo
Tech Support
Monoprice.com

 

[ViviTheMage]

I can find nothing about these, so your best bet is to go off what reviews the site has I guess.

 

[Crow550]

Ahhh! Monoprice is everywhere....

Really I just wanted the masses opinions on these. I'm sure they work good. Curious how they stack up against the competition.

 

[cmetz]

Is this device doing some sort of USB over IP protocol, or it providing a cooked interface to particular USB device classes (e.g., port 9100 socket to printers, NAS/SAN to a hard disk)?

Any chance Monoprice could cause programming documentation to become publicly posted so third parties could develop non-Windows drivers?

 

[Crow550]

Getting around to testing the server hub I got. Seems like a good deal? Don't know how the competition stacks up.

I know some printers and external drives have networking built in. This seems like a better deal and it makes finding the best deals on printers and hard drives more accessible than choosing the limited number that have network support.

I haven't really looked at other server hubs out there. It's kinda hard comparing the 3 hubs that Monoprice offers? One says it allows 1000mbps? With usb2 ports that work at what 480mbps?

 

[JackMDS]

I think that these devices are in away "History".

They came into market years ago when Network ready printers where relatively expensive.

They never fair well since Printer inner working is Not a real standard and the manufacturers of these devices could not test them with the thousands of models of printers that are in market.

In most cases the devices would work for for basic printing and would not provide any of the specialty of the some printers.

As a result these devices never became popular and most of them are Not manufactured any more.

http://www.ezlan.net/prtserver.html

That said, it is possible that it would work with your particular system.

My advice is to get one only if you can get full refund if it is Not working with your system (MonoPrice does state 30 days full refund when No restocking fees).

P.S. MonoPrice "boasts" • Original Value* : $119.25

Some people might think, Hey I get a good deal, in most cases this means that this devices are not very useful any more and they are sold cheap to get rid of them.

 

[Crow550]

My main use for this is networking some hard drives. Instead of doing it though my PC and taking up resources.