I had one of those "Duh!" experiences today. You know, finally seeing an obvious solution to a problem.
I have a four-year-old computer with a motherboard that supposedly supports up to 7 USB ports, and that came with 5 installed, none of which work. Years ago I tracked the problem down to a motherboard bug, and since I had other machines on our network that handled USB devices, I left it at that.
Today I was walking around Office Depot with $40 worth of loyalty reward coupons in my pocket, looking for something to spend them on.
And there it was, a Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 5-Port PCI Card. Duh!
I grabbed it, brought it home, installed it in my USB-deficient machine, and voila -- I had USB connectivity. Why didn't this solution ever occur to me before?