USB 1.1 ports are ubiquitous on recent motherboards and systems. Many motherboards and systems shipped after late 2002, and most motherboards and systems now shipping include USB 2.0 ports. If you buy a new system or motherboard, make certain it provides USB 2.0 (High-Speed) ports. Even if you have only USB 1.1 (low-speed or full-speed) USB peripherals, we recommend buying only USB 2.0 port cards and hubs. USB 2.0 components are now priced at commodity levels, and there is simply no reason to buy older USB 1.1 gear.

The good news is that upgrading older systems to USB 2.0 is relatively easy and inexpensive. We have used numerous USB port cards and hubs—everything from high-quality, name brand components from Adaptec and ADS Technology to no-name Pacific Rim garbage. Our advice? Buying cheap USB port cards and hubs is a mistake. In our experience, name brand components cost little more, are more reliable, and are much less likely to cause device conflicts.

Here are the USB components we recommend:

USB 2.0 port card

Any name-brand card

If you need to add USB 2.0 ports to an existing system, any name-brand USB 2.0 port card should work fine. We've used models from Adaptec, Belkin, Siig, and others. All of them seem to work properly, and we've found nothing to choose among them.

USB 2.0 hub

Any name-brand hub

Once again, we've used numerous name-brand USB 2.0 hubs, and all of them seem pretty much interchangeable. All that we've tried work properly, so we'd choose based on price. Adaptec makes some nice premium units that sell for quite a bit more than the competition and appear to be better built, but USB hubs don't take much of a beating so we'd be inclined to choose another name-brand unit that sells for half or less what the Adaptec units sell for.

Cables

Belkin F3U133 Pro Series USB 2.0 Device Cable

Belkin actually manufactures two lines of USB cable. Their Pro Series cables are quite good. Their Gold Series cables are better still. Don't be horrified by the prices on the Belkin web site. For example, they price the 6-foot Pro Series cable at $23 and the 6-foot Gold Series at $35, but numerous retailers sell the 6-foot Pro Series for less than $5 and the 6-foot Gold Series for less than $7. We think the Pro Series cables are perfectly adequate for any purpose, but we admit that if we were installing a high-speed USB 2.0 device (like an external hard drive) we would probably spend a couple bucks more for the Gold Series cable.