I've got 3 of these in the family. "Inherited" one at work from someone who said "it didn't work" (he didn't load the driver, or follow any other instructions) and it worked so well, saving so much time and wear/tear on connectors, that I bought one for each of my college daughters. 3 yrs ago I paid twice this price -and found it worthwhile.

Excellent device, I wanted it mainly for the 5.1 surround sound and it works great, it has minor driver details with AC3 filters but nothing you cannot work around, I am using ffdshow codecs and the sound drivers from the manufacturers web page.
Has a great price and works as expected, I recommended to everyone that wants 5.1 surround sound on a laptop or in my case on a MacMini with MCE2005.

I was debating bewteen this and the Toshiba Multimedia Hub. I tried this thinking to save 50 bucks, but ended up having problems with the audio. Everything else worked fine, but I could not get the surround sound out of my 5.1 speakers, only the front channels played. After rechecking the settings, I tried with another computer with the same result. Not sure if it was a bandwidth issue with the USB (I had my network and one USB device pugged in) or a defective unit. I contacted the manufactuer who was no help to say the least and only went through the same steps in the booklet to set up the settings. After I told him I did all that, all he could come up with was to send it back to the retailer and get a replacement. I ended up getting the Toshiba which worked perfectly. I would recommend spending the extra money for a quality product you know will work.