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The latest accessory I've picked up is this four port USB 3.0 hub.
It turns out that having the tower on the floor meant I was fed up with having to bend down to plug things in and, on top of that, both the Bluetooth and the graphics tablet receiver were intermittently losing connection with no pattern to sing of the problem. The only clue I had was that it would occasionally happen when I touched my feet to the crosshead that holds the dashboard.
I was investigating in case it was a shunt, I even changed the rubbers on which the tower rests on the floor but I couldn't find the source of the problem, so I decided to try this gadget to see if that solved the problem. And it did. Very possibly one of the ports of the tower has some error or who knows.
The ORICO MH4PU-P turns any USB output into four. It is made of aluminium alloy and rubbery plastic and includes a Micro USB input for a power supply, not included. Although they advertise this somewhat ambiguously in their description.
I picked this one up because, apart from being small and relatively cheap, it's a clip (not much choice) with an adjustable screw to attach it to the edge of the table or to the monitor hiding its cable (type A-to-type A 150 cm).
It's plug and play, works for Linux, Windows and Mac, and it's no mystery at all. You just hug it wherever you like, tighten the screw by hand and it's firmly attached. As it has a pad with play, it adjusts to curved surfaces such as the back of monitors.
It can only bite into surfaces between 5 mm and 30 mm thick.
As for its price, the manufacturer sells it at Bezos' for about 26€ and in the well-known Chinese grocery store you can find it for just under 14€. It comes in three versions: with power input, without power input and with only two USB ports and SD card slot in black and silver
It responds well when plugged into peripherals that don't need power beyond that supplied by USB. To connect disks or other things that require more power you will have to get a power supply with its corresponding cable.
Here are a few pictures of it installed.
