PaperHub review
By Peter Rojas 
posted January 31st 2005 1:01PM
posted January 31st 2005 1:01PM
We were pretty sure that by the year 2005 all paper was supposed to have been permanently banished from offices
nationwide, but since that's been indefinitely postponed we're actually digging the PaperHub, Pressure Drop's new USB
2.0/FireWire hub that doubles as a paper tray. It's not cheap ($150), but you do get a nice piece of brushed aluminum
to sit on your desk that won't look out of place next to your PowerBook (it might outclass your Dell).
Let's see…four USB 2.0 ports, five FireWire ports, um, to be honest, there isn't much else to review when it comes to
USB/FireWire hubs—you plug it into a computer, then you plug your peripherals into it, and then hope that everything
works—so here's some more photos instead:
This does look rather handy, as I'm still quite bent on madly scribbling accross a page when doing prelim work on a paper. And I could use a nice hub like this. I hope this comes out in the UK soon.
If you're going to add technology to an inbox, why not add sensors to it with the ability to e-mail you or sound an abnoxious alarm when something enters your inbox?
Have one. Works well. Saves space...and the weight of paper in my in-tray makes it VERY stable :-D
I want to know if it has enough power. If I plug in four 2.5 inch hard drives that pull power from the USB Bus, will the thing provide enough power, or will it go into a strange state?
Nice!
Looks very useful.
sweet... not very often you see any peripherals worth taking pr0n shots over!
Who has the need for so many firewire ports? Besides the iPod, I've yet to see a peripheral use firewire.
I can understand USB, I already use 8 ports now.
With regards to the USB hard drive question - each port can provide up to 500mA (per the USB spec) simultaneously without any problems (resulting in 2.0A total for the USB peripherals). So, if one hard drive works, adding three more will work too.
What use for FireWire? How about a hard drive (or two), a video camera, an external CD or DVD burner, an iPod...fills up quickly. This is very cool :)
TK101
With regards to the Firewire vs USB question, I have only two USB peripherals - a camera and Palm. However, I have four firewire hard drives and an iPod, and am planning on a firewire DVD burner soon. So, some people have a lot of Firewire and some have a lot of USB.
no firewire 800? hmmm.... already obsolete for $150 as far as i'm concerned.
This would be much more useful (in fact, I'd probably buy one) if it had a couple of front- or side-facing ports of each kind, for plugging in things like USB flash drives and portable FireWire hard drives... kind of a pain to reach around back for that all the time. And for those with tower PCs that sit on the floor, this would be so handy for that. Right now, to plug in a flash drive, I have to reach down to the front of my PC, but that's at floor-level, which is a pain (sometimes literally) - plugging right into the front of something on my desk would be pretty handy. (Obviously I don't have a USB keyboard.)
Sounds nice but I would rather have a version with USB 2 only. All of my Firewire devices can daisy chain except for one so I need USB 2 ports and not firewire.
Have you seen the specifics of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act? Paper, paper everywhere!! Delete the digital but store the paper copy.
This is nice, but I'm holding out for the TrestleHub, coming in Spring 2005 by the same company that makes this device.
I'll bet that it is expensive, and I'll also bet that "The Sharper Image" will retail it.
linky:
http://snipurl.com/bxn0
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but why wouldn't someone spend a lot LESS on a hub that wasn't a paper tray?
i could do so much more with $150..
Is this the missing link to the Mac Mini ;)
Andy.. it's stylized to look like a PowerMac. Mac users are no longer surprised or impressed by this kind of thing
HEADS UP! I just bought one of
these things. My computer won't
boot when it is connected to the
USB port. The paper hub works okay
when connected to a PCMCIA USB port.
Computer is a Dell Latitude D600.
This is a follow up to HEAD's UP above. I contacted Pressure Drop. Their support people
were (aaahhh) supportive. We worked out my
problem (upgraded the BIOS) on my computer.
All is well and I am now the envy of the office.