CathyC

Hi guys, and thanks for the welcome :) Oh goodness I feel like an idiot now, haha, I didn't think it would be a power issue! I take back all my whinging! Thankyou so much for explaining that to me, that's cleared it up! Unfortunately Ken there is no wattage info or any kind of info at all on the fan, and I have checked online and there is no info there either, so I have no way of knowing what the wattage is. Thanks for the useful info about voltage and wattage though, that's good to know for both future reference and in this instance! Yeah you're right Nev, if I had realised that there would be a power issue I would have got some advice about a decent cable rather than just buying one online, I never thought there would be a power issue as I have always had no trouble with connecting all my other devices via USB, but as you say that's just for data transfer, not power. It's all down to me not using my brain haha! Thanks so much for your advice, I know what to do now and next time! :) Great forums by the way, I'm glad I joined, I shall visit again just in case I may be able to help anyone with anything, perhaps some silly women like me who don't think before buying things that won't work ;) Cathy

Hi guys, Got a USB issue that is mildly (ie very) annoying and just wanted some other opinions on it! Before anyone thinks I'm a silly woman who doesn't know one end of a computer from another, I'm actually really good with computers, hehe, but this is doing my head in. :) I own an Acer Happy netbook, and it has 3x USB 2.0 ports. I recently bought a USB desk fan because of this hot weather, as I work from home and wanted a nice cool breeze about the place. The fan works perfectly when plugged straight into my computer, so there are obviously no compatibility issues there. However, I also bought a USB extension cable from Amazon, to allow me to move the fan about a bit more. The cable was specified as a USB 2.0 cable, so I thought ok fine, that should work no probs. It didn't. The fan won't work at all when plugged in via this damn cable. I thought the cable must be faulty, but I tried it with my Kindle just to see, and it worked fine with the Kindle. So now I'm confused! Obviously the cable seems ok, just not with the fan. I know there's no probs with the fan, and everything is USB 2.0 so it's not as if there's a compatibility issue anywhere. I emailed the store at Amazon where I bought the cable and they weren't particularly helpful, I received three lines of text with no punctuation or capital letters, suggesting that they thought it was a power issue and that I needed to buy a powered hub. Now I am well aware that powered hubs are for more powerful things like scanners, etc, and I certainly don't think that a tiny 14cm USB fan would need a powered hub? That sounds suspiciously to me as if they are just trying to get me to spend more money on a hub in their store! :( It's a mystery to me - has anyone else had any experience of something like this? Thanks in advance for any insight anyone else may be able to offer Cathy