usb hub – recommendations?

[hugglymugly]

I've never bought one before, so I'm a bit confused from looking at the ones available on Amazon.

I'd like one that sits on my desk, so it will need to have a cable about 1 to 1.5m long to reach the back of the computer (which isn't on my desk). I need one slot permanently for the speakers, and the rest will be for occasional use by an external harddrive, external DVD drive, foot pedal (for transcribing) and when I've finally finished reorganising my set-up here it might be easier to have the keyboard and mouse plugged into the hub as well. Would I need a powered hub?

For that many devices yes, as it can make them alot slower if using pc power, and when using speakers which only get power through USB then will not be able to support ful power.

Thanks, that narrows down my search quite considerably.