@tjaoz:
By your own words, Spider is the cheapest of the Amiga solutions. ( Pegasos I doesn't count, it's a motherboard. ) Now, that being said, your average Joe is going to compare the price of their USB solution for the Amiga against what they find at WalMart, RadioShack, CompUSA. Nevermind the number of ports, the actual numbers, most of us are going to get what we can afford. So, the absolute cheapest Amiga USB controller is the spider (if you already have a Mediator). That is still roughly twice as much as a card found in walmart.
I appreciate your research into further pricing, because all in all it does help the end user. At first, I was a bit peeved, but only because I was wanting to show Poseidon. I did cover a bit of the cost in the article--but only about a paragraph or so. Just enough, in my opinion, to inform the user that it isn't necissarily cheap. On the whole, I found USB to be very useful, and worth having. Still, it will depend on the user's needs.
Another important topic that I did *NOT* touch on is the version of Mediator on which one can use the Spider. My Mediator is about two years old now, and I know there was several hardware revisions.
Unfortunately, due to a couple of old HDD's physically going bad, I am not able to use my A1200T at the moment. When I can replace the HDD, I would love nothing more than to get a Spider working on the thing. I just want to make it clear: I have nothing against Elbox.
Anyway, it appears that you just wanted a much more in depth review of USB on the Amiga in general, rather than a simple review of Poseidon. I apologize if I had given you false hopes ;-) At any rate, I'm glad it inspired you to research more of the numbers!
