USB-hub on the MBA?

[Teclis]

Considering selling my current MB for the thinner and lighter MBA. My only concern about the machine is that it only has one USB port. The MBA also runs on just a 45 watts power adapter. Does this mean that you cannot use an USB hub because of the power it will require to run multiple USB devices?

 

[TheBearman]

No problems for me

I used a little 4 port hub on the MBA during my last trip. I wasn't using it to do any real work, just charging my cellphone and ipod. Didn't seem to have any problems doing this for three out of five nights. They both charged just fine and were charging even though I was using the air. One thing that did surprise me was the fact that even suspended the port was still hot, continuing to charge overnight. Maybe someone else can respond to running several USB devices through a multi-port.

 

[Clix Pix]

I recently bought a new powered hub which I will be using with a CF card reader and an external HD connected to my MBA; I am on a trip and while I did try things out at home and all looked good, this trip will be the acid test as I upload quite a lot of images per day into the external drive via the USB hub.....

 

[Teclis]

I recently bought a new powered hub which I will be using with a CF card reader and an external HD connected to my MBA.

I suppose there are no problems running the card reader and external HD simultaneously?

 

[Mhaddy]

I recently bought a new powered hub which I will be using with a CF card reader and an external HD connected to my MBA; I am on a trip and while I did try things out at home and all looked good, this trip will be the acid test as I upload quite a lot of images per day into the external drive via the USB hub.....

Will be doing the same thing when I go to Japan next month -- hub, CF card reader, and portable HDD (WD Passport). Did a test here at home and it seemed to work all right.

 

[PokeyBird]

USB-hub problems

I have a powered 4-port USB D-Link hub so I could keep a WD drive connected for Time Machine, a printer connected, plug in the MBA Super Drive when needed and have a spare port for flash memory. When using Time Machine with the WD 250GB Passport drive, the drive repeatedly disconnects itself after about 10 minutes with the error message "data device disconnected improperly, data may have been lost .... ". The problem is very repeatable. Only a complete shutdown allows the WD drive to reappear. Unplugging and plugging back in doesn't work, a simple restart doesn't work.

Does anyone know a solution to this annoyance?

The printer seemed to work fine.

Thanks.

PokeyBird

From Apple's site I learned the Super Drive will not work with a hub. It requires a direct connect to the MBA port. Why?

 

[alphaod]

From Apple's site I learned the Super Drive will not work with a hub. It requires a direct connect to the MBA port. Why?

Because the power draw of the SuperDrive is over the specifications of USB and only the USB port on the MBA is engineered to provide this extra juice.