Yeah, distance does come into play as well since I can't goto Walmart for that same reason as it seems they usually are not in big cities so what I meant is only if the option of a local vendor that has a good return policy would be available, you can use that route as 30 miles is not worth the hassle. I think that was a good reason that it was good to have things like Radio Shack's around and hopefully you had one that was actually local to you. The other thing you could have done is see if someone local had a USB hub you can borrow for a short period of time since you will know within a few minutes if it works or not and then after that, you can just buy any USB hub (2.0 I think in this case, a 3.0 would still work but it will just act on the fastest both the device and hub is capable of) that meets the spec and you should get one that is a powered hub meaning it also uses electricity from the wall in addition to the USB cable if you want it to be foolproof.