Sarasota PC Monitor
Keyspan USB Parallel Transfer Cable
A Software Review
by George Whitesell
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.I have helped many people transfer their data files from an old computer to a new computer. I have used floppy disks, ZIP disks, CDR disks, USB drives, and cables connecting parallel to parallel port or USB to USB port. Some manufacturers have started to omit parallel and serial ports on their new computers (particularly laptops), and many older computers lack USB ports, as well as ZIP disks or CDRW drives. This makes it difficult to transfer files from the old computer to the new. If both computers are desktop computers the old hard drive can be installed in the new computer as a second drive to allow files to be transferred, although you then have to contend with jumper settings on the hard drives. Additionally, if one or both computers are laptops, physically moving the hard drive is not an option.
I tested the Keyspan USB Parallel Transfer Cable that has a parallel port connector on one end and a USB connector on the other end.
A short 5-step set of instructions is included with the cable. More detailed information is included in an electronic manual included on the CD. As with most USB devices you install the software before connecting the cable. The installation of the software is straight forward.
When you first install the USB end of the cable on a computer running Windows XP the new hardware wizard will run 3 times. You must click Install Anyway when the warning message pops up that the software has not passed Windows testing.
The instructions then step you through starting up the software on both computers. There is a final step requiring you to click the Connect button on the Local PC (the computer using the USB end of the cable). This step is included in the detailed manual on the CD but it was missing on the QuickStart procedure.
You use the Local PC (the new computer) to control all file transfers. A dual pane window shows the Local and Remote computers and you can navigate to any folder on either PC. You can Copy or Move files and folders from either computer to the other. You can also delete files and folders and there is a Favorites list that you can add folders to so you do not have to hunt for them in the future.
All of the references in the software are to directories and not folders. This may confuse some people who do not remember when folders were called directories.
I ran a couple of tests to measure the transfer rate across the cable, with a Pentium III 800 MHz laptop computer running Windows Me on the parallel end and a 3 GHz Pentium 4 desktop running Windows XP on the USB end of the cable. It took 1 minute 39 seconds to transfer a single 16.6 MByte file for a transfer rate of just over 10 Mbytes a minute. I then transferred a folder that contained 264 Mbytes consisting of 18 sub folders and 262 files which took a little over 31 minutes. I calculated the transfer rate to be around 5.5 Mbytes a minute for that transfer. I presume the slower transfer rate in the second case was due to the overhead involved in setting up the folder structure on the new computer and tracking the larger number of files.
While the transfer rates I measured are not exceptionally fast the Keyspan cable allows you to successfully transfer files between two computers when there is no reasonable alternative way to do so. My desktop computer has USB 2.0 but the limiting factor is the transfer rate out of the parallel connector which contains the parallel to USB converter. I would expect the transfer rate to be similar for USB 1.0 or USB 1.1. Presumably the speed of the individual computers would affect the transfer rate as well
Overall the cable worked perfectly and I highly recommend it for anyone needing to transfer files from an old computer without USB to a new computer that does not have a parallel port.
The price of the Keyspan USB Parallel Transfer Cable (product number UFT-125) is $29.99 if ordered directly from Keyspan at www.keyspan.com . Keyspan offers several unique devices for computers including a USB Presentation Remote allowing you to remotely control a computer presentation wirelessly which I used for my presentation on Intel Hyper-Threaded processors at the September General Meeting. Visit www.keyspan.com to see the numerous special adapters and standard USB products they offer. :
Copyright 2004. This article is from the December 2004 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.