A year and a half ago I bought my way into the cool club buy purchasing a Macbook.  It’s been serving me very well and I’ve been so happy with it I actually sold my Windows desktop this past fall, the Macbook is now my only computer.  The one thing I always felt slighted about when buying it was the lack of USB ports, it only comes with two.  Two, seriously, are Macbook users less likely to plug things in than Macbook Pro users?

While I’ve lived this long with playing the swap this for that game, sometimes it’s a real pain.  The USB ports are so close that it’s nearly impossible to use a thumb drive + any other cable, and my card reader, yea that’s the only thing fitting in there, the second port becomes inaccessible.  Last night, I finally found a solution.

Griffin introduced the SmartShare USB slimmed down two port USB hub, kind of aimed towards the Macbook Air but works great with my Macbook.  USB hubs are nothing new, but they’ve always been bulky and often offer 4 or more USB ports in line, which again presents a problem if you’re using a larger than average thumb drive or something funky like the card reader for my compact flash card. Not anymore.

The SmartShare is simple and elegant in design and has two ports not connected to each other, allowing devices to be plugged in of almost any size.  At less than three inches long, it neatly fits into my Crumpler bag without excessive cables or plugs.

These small, simple devices make my both more productive and happy.  It’s fully USB 2.0 compatible and will transfer speeds up to 480 Mbps.  Last night I plugged two external hard drives into it and had no speed issues accessing either one of them.  If you need an extra USB port without the bulk of other models, check out the SmartShare.

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