Belkin (F5L009) 5-Port USB Hub

Purchased this device along with a Belkin N1 wireless router specifically to enable wireless USB printing throughout the house. The product simply fails to perform as advertised.

Setup appeared to be a snap - pop in the CD, click a couple of buttons and the device fires up. The printer appears in the hub management screen but every print job fails. Updated the firmware and downloaded the new hub management application, still no go. It is noted that while running this on XP the hub will let you configure the device itself through their application but on Vista the hub refuses to appear on the configuration screen (even though the printer appears as available). Connecting to the device via the IP address in a browser shows that the printer is connected and waiting for print jobs but the application on the laptops (one XP and one Vista) refuses to relay the print jobs. While the installation routine claims to open the firewall for the application it doesn't open all of the necessary ports and leave this as an exercise to the user (which many people won't be able to figure out) - specifically the UDP port required is already opened but you have to manually open the TCP port as well. (But even this doesn't make the thing work.)

The technical support page at the Belkin corporate website is hands down the weakest I have ever seen from that company. Each of the eight "answers" are about a paragraph long and contain no helpful information whatsoever. The "troubleshooting" guide within the application is limited to essentially "make sure it is plugged in".

This product was clearly rushed to market for the holiday sales: not only does the thing simply not work but their support page couldn't have taken more than 2-4 hours to slap together.

If this is how Belkin intends to conduct business in the future I may have purchased my last product from them - what a pity. They used to have higher quality.