Just got a BT home hub. Works nicely but wondering. If I plug my normal printer into it via the USB port, will my wireless laptop talk to it. Ditto the network cabled desktop. What else is the USB port for?
You can (I did), and then you can use your printer from any of your computers.
You'll have to Google 'using BT Home Hub as print serve' or something, as I can't remeber how I got it to work. I know it was a lot easier from the Mac, but I think I had to use the PC to 'zap' the router, to enable the USB function. The USB port should, in theory, allow you to use a USB hard drive, or memory stick, as a network drive. For some reason, BT don't enable the HomeHubs to do this, out of the box, even though the port is there.
The gubbins inside will be made by some hardware manufacturer, and be simliar to other routers they make. It's the firmware that determines it to be useable only on a BT BB network.
I keep meaning to get around to find something to flash my HH's firmware, so's I can use it instead of my Netgear router, which does not in any way have a USB port.
The only niggle I had, when using a USB networked printer, was that you'd have to turn the printer off and on again, if you wanted to do more than one printing job, and if you wanted to use another machine. Not a big deal, as I usually only do one printing job at a time anyway.