I bought this as i was having to switch between ports far too often so after seeing the price of this i didn't think twice about buying it.
I will start off by saying this is not a powered usb hub, It runs off the power coming from the usb port on your computer and allthough i've not tried it i wouldn't buy this device for connecting hard drives, scanners or anything that requires a bit of extra power. That said though i have only 3 ports on my laptop. I use one for my exteranl hard drive which needs power from the usb port and the same for my i-pod dock as it needs to charge my ipod. This leaves me with one port so i bought this.
I have my Keyboard reciever, 16gb flash drive, optical mouse and belive it or not an xbox 360 controller all plugged into this hub and they all work fine, I thought i was being a little hopefull when i pluged the controller in but to my suprise it worked fine without interupting the other devices.
It's not the most eye pleasing bit of kit but not ugly either, Can't fault it really price is good, Does the job so will just have to see how it holds out in the future, as for now 5 stars all the way.
I have not tried using my hard drive with this yet but to be honest i wouldn't trust plugging anything but a direct usb port for that and i would sugest the same for anyone else, Use it for low power devices and you can't go wrong.