Like most people, I ran out of USB ports a long time ago on my laptop. I’ve been playing the plug in and plug out swap game and so far things have been pretty happy for me.

All that changed when I made the jump to micro-SD cards and SDHC cards for my digital camera and phones. Turns out, my older card reader won’t read these new formats and higher capacities.

Still, I resisted the need to change or buy new gear. I was okay for a while just using a mini-USB plug and connecting my phone and digital camera directly to my laptop.

Unfortunately, I needed to use both and that’s when my luck finally ran out.

I ventured to my local computer gear store and started hunting for a replacement card reader when I came across IOGEAR’s 3-port USB hub and 45-in-1 card reader for $19.99 (on sale for $14.99 and a $5 mail-in rebate, so final price would be around $10).

Regular card readers were around $10-$20 and USB hubs were around $10-$95 (really? $95?), so adding the two together in a single $15 purchase (post rebate) seemed like a great freakin’ idea to me.

This unit from IOGEAR is small. Surprisingly small. In fact, it’s officially become a part of my travel gear.

Ever space on the hub is used for something, so you know a lot of thinking went into this design.

A mini-USB to two USB cable is included. I’m not sure what the second USB connector is for, but my guess is if you need a powered hub, the second connector will provide sufficient power to the hub for a powered port.

I saw a similar unit, larger and with 52-in-1 design, but I’m having a hard time finding all 42-in-1 memory formats on the unit that I have now, so I’ll just give you the highlights. IOGEAR’s unit supports every single Memory Stick format (Duo, Pro/Duo Pro), SDHC (higher capacity SD cards), micro-SD, mini-SD, MMC, compact flash, and a whole bunch more that I can’t find. Suffice it to say, if you’ve got it, IOGEAR’s unit will read it.

Performance is what you’d expect. I didn’t notice IOGEAR’s unit to be slower nor any faster to other card readers. The hub works perfectly and I was able to plug in printers, phones, and joy-pads to it with no issues.

That’s more than enough for me at an awesome price of around $10 (after rebate and sale price). You need to find it and get it…now!!!

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