Looking for extra FireWire or USB ports for your Mac? Then this could be just the ticket. This is a powered USB 2.0/FireWire hub that offers two FireWire ports and four USB 2.0 ports. A further two ports, one FireWire and one USB, are used to connect the hub back to your Mac.
Two cables come in the box, one USB and one FireWire, and both these hub-to-Mac linking cables need to be in use if you want to freely dock and undock FireWire and USB devices. You could use just one cable type to connect back to the Mac if you like, but then that would limit you to only docking that type of device. A FireWire signal cannot connect to the Mac via the hub if only the USB hub-to-Mac linking cable is in use.
Hubs like this can reduce desktop clutter and let you dock many devices at one time. We didn't notice any significant delays in data transfer rates when connecting external drives to a Mac via the hub instead of directly. Overall, a winner!