Looking for extra USB ports!?

You don't need to spend a fortune, but equally you need to realise that $5 is simply not realistic. You might be able to find a cheap bus-powered hub for that money and if you are fairly undemanding it may even work satisfactorily, but for a dependable self pwoered hub you need to spend a little more money, say perhaps $20 - hardly a fortune. Something like a href="http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DUB-H4-High-Speed-4-Port/dp/B00006B7DA/ref=sr_1_17?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1307766320&sr=1-17" rel="nofollow"http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DUB-H4-High…/a fits the bill and will prove solid and dependable in operation. Headaches (and at worst, data loss) caused by unreliable hardware are not worth saving a few dollars for.