Review on 🔀 IOGEAR GUB201 USB 2.0 Peripherals Sharing Switch - Improve your searches! by Ryan Olsen

BACKGROUND: Me, meaning we share an HP printer/copier/scanner and it works fine. On the other hand, our home office doesn't work so well. As it turned out, this is a problem with Windows XP. You see I have set up computers on the network and it works great. With one caveat, you can't share a scanner on XP. You can share everything else but not the scanner. And boy do I scan a lot. So over the network we can share the printer, but when I want to scan I have to disconnect it from a computer and connect it to my computer. This will (as you can probably see) not work. So what to do? Purchase a USB device for resource sharing. I bought 2 other USB resource sharing devices but couldn't get any of them to work. The? USB device not working? I've never heard of anything like this. And it happened twice! I was shocked. So we're back to connecting and disconnecting. Sigh. A few months later I went hunting (again), but this time here on Revane. I went through all the Resource Sharing USB devices, read all the reviews, and then bought (remembering with trepidation my last two failed USB devices). PURCHASE: As it turns out, this unit only comes with one cable, so I had to order another cable. It's okay, I still needed something like a 16 foot cable. Luckily, a few reviewers mentioned an issue with the cable. I also found it odd that these devices couldn't be sent to mailboxes, but again, that's no big deal. PRODUCT: With fear in my eyes, I opened the packaging of the IOGEAR USB 2.0 Peripheral Sharing Switch and followed the instructions. . They went like this: 1 - connect to computer 12 - connect to computer 23 - connect to "printer/scanner" (in my situation) That's it! Our computers buzzed to let us know the USB port was plugged in, little bubbles appeared to let us know new hardware was found and ready, and the little switch itself beeped a few times to let us know it was ready was. Guess. What happened? It worked! I pressed the button on the switch and one computer can print and scan, I press the button again and my computer can print and scan. I was so excited about something that required no setup, reboot or any hassles. phew! Another thing I like about the way IOGEAR set up this product. It came with software, but even they say you don't need it. The only thing the software does is place a toggle button on your computer desktop (rather than manually pressing the button on the device itself). Thank you IOGEAR for creating a simple device that is easy to install and just works.