Dale my daughter said the samething about a powered usb hub. I use the powered hub to run usb appliances off of. Such as my laptop cooling fans, my wireless mouse, my usb laptop light, my usb lighted karaoke sign. Things like my edirol sound interface, my external CD/DVD drive, and of course my external hard drive i come right out of the usb ports with those. But this has even made a difference in how warm my laptop power supply gets. Everything runs cooler now with a powered usb hub, and the blue light on my hub is extra cool looking as well. Great advice.
